


Kiss Me Before You Go

by soobadnoonecanstopher



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Past Character Death, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 05:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15017345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soobadnoonecanstopher/pseuds/soobadnoonecanstopher
Summary: Genre: Romance, Angst,Prompt: You meet Minseok in a bar and swear that you know him from somewhere. You have no idea where you know him from, but now you have to do something about it.





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: One-Shot Prompt Challenge taken with @thesammtimes, @3kpop2jagi1, @xiubaek13, @artificialskyway, and @forexcapism on Tumblr. 
> 
> Warnings: Adultery, Multiple Major Character Deaths, A rollercoaster of emotions.

_ Certain things leave a mark on the soul. _

_ Some events are so profound, they slash in deep jagged wounds, pulling at the flesh and ripping through tendons with such ease one would think the soul was made of nothing more than a pad of soft butter forgotten beside the stove.  _

_ Birth, heartaches, love, death. All of these leave their marks. Some bigger than others, but nothing leaves a mark quite as deep as watching the one you love, die.  _

 

**_ACT I_ **

 

He was energy. He was warmth, cloaked in the color green that suited him so much better than the crisp white of your own uniform. The white that never stayed white in this dusty tent. The makeshift medical bay in the middle of a field, far enough away from the vicious combat to keep the bits of shrapnel and fire from the grenades and exploding bombs from piercing the canvas walls, but close enough to the action to see the steady stream of wounded men pouring in through the parted tent flaps.

He was mischief and brevity as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against an empty medical cot, eyes flipping around the tent quickly before he moved to slip his fingers slowly and carefully into the front pocket of your skirt, removing a handful of morphine capsules and pocketing them with a wink of his eye when you gave him the best school teacher disapproving expression you could manage.

“Thanks, beautiful,” he leaned hard into the wink to sell it and you held a hand out, palm up, expecting him to at least pretend that he might return your medical supplies.

“What if I get into trouble?” you pouted and he looked down at your open hand with his lips curled at the edges just enough to let you know that you wouldn't see a single vial of that medicine back.

“Then my men will appreciate your sacrifice when they’re bleeding out in the mud.” His pretty eyes held you hostage. The sounds of explosions surrounding you was a constant and neither of you flinched when a particularly loud explosion shook the walls of the tent, despite being a bit closer to the medical tent than they usually landed. His eyes merely blinked once and took on a faraway focus that seemed to give you permission to look over his face.

Manliness and dirt. Oil and grime and the smell of gunpowder mixed with some other kind of smoke mingled around his entire being, yet his face remained untouched. The small scab from an old superficial wound marred his temple and his black hair laid just beside. He was beautiful. His face belonged at the front of a fashion runway, not at the front line of this fucked up war, yet he brushed off the names the other men called him behind his back easily. Their words rolled off his back like water over well-oiled feathers. The only indication that he had even heard them was the occasional narrowing of his striking eyes that preceded some order he shouted out to a subordinate, the easy authority evident in his voice held almost as much power as those eyes did. Almost as much power as the bombs that kept shaking the walls of this tent.

Whenever he stared at you, you found yourself breaking some of your own rules. Rules that were kept in place to protect you from getting too close with any of them. Rules that reminded you that you were surrounded by enough death to choke on and you knew better than to wonder about him. Rules that you felt slap you across the back of your hand hard like the ruler of a strict nun every time you stared for too long at his lips. Every time you felt the pull inside your chest when you would catch him watching you from across the mess room with an unreadable expression on his face and that same faraway look you often saw when he wasn't eating the food on his plate, or listening to the words coming from the soldier who sat across the table from him.

You knew better than to glance down at his left hand and catch the tiny flash of gold that adorned his ring finger and then scoff at the tinge of disappointment that filled your gut each time you saw it.

Of course, he had a girl back home. With a face like that, the man would have been snatched up long before he was drafted. As your mind drifted along that vein you couldn't help the images of the happy reunion. Him stepping off the plain into the open arms of the most beautiful woman in town, the kind of beauty he deserved. The kind you'd never even scrape at. Elegant and perfect enough to deserve to look into that face every morning over breakfast. When the daydreams began to include little miniature versions of himself dancing happily around the couple as they embraced to flashing cameras and triumphant fanfare you cleared your throat and smacked the palm of your hand noisily against your head, annoyed at yourself for taking things so far.

There was a burst of chaos through the door. Something that happened so often you no longer felt that surge of panic as the bodies were dragged, carried and reeled in through the doorway. Bloodied and screaming men arrived, many with life-altering injuries, some with that vacant shell-shocked look on their faces as their minds tried to protect them from the trauma they had just endured.

“Soldier, report.” He spoke up from beside you, addressing a soldier who carried a limp man who had long lost consciousness from blood loss.

“Commander, there was a surprise attack, two clicks from here. The enemy has broken through the stronghold from last night, forcing us back again.” The soldier's voice was worn and rusty and you tried to concentrate on stopping the bleeding in the man in front of you. The bleeding that was moving fast enough that told you no matter how quickly you moved, the damage had already been too significant.

The unconscious man on your table was the wrong color and the only reason the blood loss slowed was because there simply wasn't enough left to flow.

You'd seen it enough to know that you simply couldn't stand to waste the extra blood on someone who didn't stand a chance and the commander’s eyes followed your hands as you laid a flat palm over the dead man’s forehead, you uttered a quick prayer and removed the dog tags from around his neck. They clattered against the dozens of others occupying the small metal bucket that sat at the feet of your medical station.

“Morgue!” You shouted and two medics retrieved the casualty.

The commander was busy with the map and crackling radio that sounded out on the table top. He rarely let the stress show on his face and sometimes you'd wondered if he ever let any emotion show on his face at all, but the more you worked around him, watching his face too closely if you were being honest, the more you began to see his well-hidden tells.

Most of his emotion was hidden behind those eyes. The same eyes you were certain watched your face a little too closely at times to catch your weaknesses as well. As much as you didn't want to admit to yourself, those eyes were gaining ground in becoming your greatest weakness. It was a good thing you could hide your emotions so well. The man would remain oblivious, complete his duty and return home to the wife that waited for him.

A soldier with a gaping wound in his thigh appeared on your bench and you got to work sterilizing and suturing the wound. He winced hard when the needle pulled bits of his skin together and you felt in your pocket for your morphine before recalling the commanders wandering fingers moments before the bombs.

“We’re moving. We pack up tonight. Let's put some distance between us and those fucking bombs before this whole base gets wiped off the map.”

Soldiers gave their salutes and your eyes widened at the thought of having to pack up and move everything. Sure it was all designed to be portable but you'd been running on maybe two hours of sleep in the past three days since the onslaught began and your limbs were beginning to grow heavy and sluggish no matter how much tepid instant coffee you choked down.

An order was an order and although you weren't a soldier you felt the pull against your gut to fall in line. The other nurses did the same as they hastily began packing up supplies, rolling up cots, packing the bleeding wounds tight with rolled gauze, enough to hold for the move and as you worked with them you felt it again.

That nagging pull to him that felt like a warm blanket of sunshine coating your skin. A clean warmth, much different that the sticky humid sweat that coated your skin here, the warmth you felt at your back was as tempting as a hot shower with steam pouring out. With the smell of shampoo and soap and the splashing of water as your lover waits for you to join.

Surely you were imagining this. When you turned you were sure you wouldn't find a single thing of interest. Everyone was working hard, you had to have been imagining this.

The nagging was too strong and you gave in. When you turned your eyes found his instantly as if pulled by a magnet you found those eyes and he had you again, trapped in his net.

It only lasted for a second, but the warmth spread from your back around to your neck and chest and crept its spindly fingers up your cheeks. He looked away quickly. Busying himself with whatever he had been pretending to do as he watched you instead and you stared at the shape of his back for longer than you should have. Watching the way the muscles moved just below the fabric of his army fatigues. Wondering just how his skin would look below. You knew he was firm. You'd brushed up against him enough times to feel the heat his body generated and the solid way his body moved against your arm, against your back, against your...

“Careful there,” Maria, one of the other nurses and the closest friend you had here whispered over your shoulder and you jolted to life. Shaking your head to rid yourself of the commander. You licked your lips and shrugged into a small smile.

“No harm in looking. Besides its just war stuff anyway.” You defended against the knowing look she shot you and you did your best to ignore the short scoff.

“Not when he looks at you just as much,” she said, leaning into you for privacy. It seemed unnecessary given the amount of noise going on around you.

“And is wearing a ring,” she said under her breath shaking her head and you screwed your lips shut tightly, with no retort that could justify this.

Even as you said it, you could feel the lie in your own words as the harm coursed through your veins and brought with it the guilt for even giving any voice to the temptation.

That's what he was. He was a temptation. So what if it was war and times like this had different rules that were regularly regarded as ‘wartime rules’ where mistakes were plenty and comfort was shared as freely as were reports of goings-on back home or the weather forecast for the week. The truth was he wasn't yours, could never be yours, probably didn't even really like you that much, and when this war was over he wouldn’t spare you a second thought as he rushed into the waiting arms of his wife back at home.

So what if sometimes he wasn't even wearing the ring around his finger and you wondered if perhaps he took it off on purpose so you would see him without it. How pathetic were the waters your thoughts liked to drift in?

So what if sometimes he stood too close to you and looked too closely over your shoulder as you worked on his injured troops and when he moved just right you could actually smell him even through the mask. A smell nearly intoxicating if you really got down to it. Like grass, gun oil, faintly like diesel exhaust with a sweet undertone that you couldn't place and what you could only describe as the musk of a real man. A man who liked guns you figured. There were some rumors of his accuracy with a pistol that you were sure were a bit too tall to be real, yet spoken amongst the newly arrived recruits as if they were gospel.

Wartime rules were a cop-out, designed to absolve sinners of blame. Those rules surely didn't apply to him and they sure as hell didn't apply to you. You could easily resist the temptation.

Probably.

At least he seemed content with watching you from afar and so far had kept any actual touching to a minimum. You were thankful for that because then one time you actually felt the brush of his fingers along your cheekbone, slowly tickling their way up toward your ear to tuck a stray strand of hair behind your ear during a procedure, you felt so shocked and affected by just how warm his fingers were that you dropped the needle you had been holding right into the gaping wound of the soldier you had been suturing. Of course, it was on a string and easily fished out, but your face burned with embarrassment for at least a half hour after you closed up the final stitch.

Supplies and equipment were all packed up. Even the walls of the tent were rolled tight and loaded onto flat vibrating trucks that spewed their exhaust into your nose and made you cough and sneeze . The whole camp was moved.

Even in the bustling movement, there was direction and a strange sort of order as soldiers played their part under the watchful eye of the commander and the other higher ups. Soon your feet stood on dirt and you watched the other medical personnel climb into jeeps and trucks as the sound of gunfire and explosions muted the sounds of the engines moving through the forest.

The new camp, you overheard, would be several kilometers to the north and you welcomed the brief respite you knew would greet you with the move. Once there was some distance from those bombs, perhaps you would even get to sleep in a flat cot before the exhaustion caught up with you and you dropped out of necessity, closing your eyes in a heap at the corner of the medical tent as men wailed in pain or bled out mere feet from you.

You could feel the fatigue bumbling through your veins, catching up to you where you stood with your boots squarely planted over the bare dirt where the medical tent once sat. Looking across the bare field you saw where the makeshift camp was where your cot had been. Where you laid your head and drifted off, how many hours ago had it been? You felt the world swaying the longer you stood in your spot and someone ran a warm hand over the small of your back, leaning a shoulder against yours.

Your eyes were closed but your mind was awake and you swear you could smell him. That damn musk that had to be bottled one day so you could take it with you and spray it on your wrist and have it at will.

“When was the last time you slept?” Were you imagining his voice in your ear or…

When you jolted to life you could feel the blood rushing to your face as your cheeks heated up. Had you drifted off? Standing here in this empty field? When you jumped you felt the hand against your back tighten and wrap around your waist.

You turned to face the voice and met the striking eyes of the commander, watching you with what you could only describe as concern. It looked like concern but he was too close to you and your mind wasn't at it’s sharpest right now. You looked at his face, letting your eyes drift down to his lips that were moving and he held you at the waist with a strong arm, smelling like he did. How could someone be this tempting?

The field around you was quiet. The distant sound of gunfire sounded further away now, perhaps the troops had drawn the action in the opposite direction to give everyone a chance to leave. The sound of the trucks that left already a low hum in the background and you looked around at the well packed dirt looking for any sign of another human being.

They had all left.

“--don’t sleep when you have the chance you could make a mistake. Like standing in a deserted field all alone while the entire army moves camp. Do you want me to draw a target right on your back? Would that make you feel more comfortable?” He was nagging you and your eyes watched the way his lips pulled as he spoke. The way he tilted his head to emphasize the words he thought were the most important parts of his lecture and the way he spoke softer to you than to his men. The calm sort of sweetness you could feel just below the surface of his words. Sweetness that you were probably imagining. Hell, you were probably dreaming right now and he wasn't steering you into the passenger seat of his jeep as you watched him lean in close, touching your waist to buckle the seat belt over your lap.

He was moving slowly, clearly not sensing any immediate danger you didn't feel a sense of urgency in his actions at all. Hestruggled to line up the buckle and press it into the space between your seat and the center console. He was so close you could see the individual hairs on his eyelashes as he squeezed his eyes in frustration when the buckle didn't fasten.

His eyebrows furrowed and he pulled it out again, leaning down to look closer he moved his other hand to hold the female end of the buckle, he pushed again and you heard a click before he sighed and relaxed his expression some.

“Sorry this one is--” he was speaking in front of you, too close and too handsome and you couldn't help it. You weren't quite in your right mind right now but he was here close enough for you to touch.

“--broken.” The small puff of air he expelled through his lips cut his words in half like a sword and the warmth of his face felt soft and inviting below your fingertips. He had a bit of dust along his jaw line and you brushed it away as you moved your fingers along his face.

His eyes were on you, moving over your face wide and alert but he didn't leave. He didn't reach up to grab angrily at your hand, pulling it down and shooting you an admonishing look for the liberties you had taken with his skin and his dust. Instead, you felt that breath along your face. Warmth and musk and the inhale he took sounded unsteady and he closed his eyes.

The commander, the most self assured, confident, bravado filled, gun slinging, sharp shooting, downright scary at times when you got on his bad side commander...that commander, your-- commander.

Your commander… just inhaled the shakiest breath you had ever heard from another human being and he wasn't leaving. He wasn't storming away from you, straightening his posture and pulling himself in a huff around the jeep, into the driver's seat to drive your misbehaving ass to the new camp site so you could get some sleep and stop making mistakes. His eyes were closed through it and your mind sharpened to what you were doing.

Just in time for his eyes to open and you found yourself completely trapped with your hand on his face, your thumb brushing down near his lips and his eyes staring into your eyes with a sharp focus that made the skin on the back of your neck prickle.

Why wasn't he stopping you? Maybe he was caught off his guard. Maybe he felt this incredible force that was pushing you into him.

Something in his the way his eyes held yours felt too familiar to discount. Something in the quiet way he breathed in and out, close enough to feel the warmth against your skin felt like a ghost. A phantom that haunted you in a dream maybe. Was this just deja vu?

It wasn't just the exhaustion that made you do it. It was the familiarity with his lips that gave the final push into him.

He didn't even stiffen in surprise when your lips met his. He didn't react in any way that felt admonishing. He was frozen only for a fraction of a second before he came to life with a sharp inhale. His hands which had been bracing somewhere on your sides moved and he held your face.

And he kissed you back.

He held onto your face with warm, rough hands and a tilt of his head, a parting of his lips and a quiet sound from deep within the walls of his chest. The commander kissed you back with a desperate intensity that matched the feeling inside your belly that fluttered and swelled with every pull of his lips, every brush of his thumbs along your cheekbones, the fullness grew inside of you until you felt that perhaps you might burst at the seams. Despite the lack of oxygen as your brain grew fuzzier than it had already been, you felt it. That same familiarity in his kiss, as if this was the man you were made to kiss. This was the man you had been kissing in your sleep every single night since you saw his face-- no -- since before you ever saw his face.

The taste of his mouth was that familiar to you. It was comfort. It was home.

The man kissed you like you were his and he was yours.

His thighs rested against your knee and he didn't angle himself away from you to conceal his erection. The heat from between his legs pressed against you as he moved closer, stepping into you and you shifted. You felt tingles shoot down your thighs down to your toes. Your movement was restricted by the seatbelt he had just fastened and you grunted into his lips when you couldn't escape.

Impossibly, the tiny giggle that escaped his parted lips did even more for your arousal than the kiss. Your eyes opened to find his face, the small smile flashed for a second before he bit down on his bottom lip, pulling it between white teeth.

Your eyes were stuck on his mouth until you heard a click-- you had been freed by roaming hands. Strong and rough, they moved over your hips, reaching the edge of the crisp white fabric of your skirt to hook behind both of your knees, he pulled hard. You met the edge of the jeep’s seat. Legs parted and the warmth of his hips settled in between. A stance so gratifyingly suggestive.

“What are you doing?” You heard the confusion in your own voice, just below the thickness. Were you asking him or asking yourself the question? Was this a mistake? You knew it was wrong. Definitely not allowed both by the military's laws and by the laws of God and of man, but there was something inside of you that felt...felt like  _ his _ . You had always felt like you were his, through the months of flirting, small touches, attention, looks, stares, all of it.

“What are  _ you _ doing?” Your own question, he repeated back to you with a knowing lift of his eyebrows.

You felt vaguely reproached. He was right. You had touched him first. You had kissed him first. And you definitely wanted to do it again.

You shrugged your shoulders and he licked his lips once.

“I guess I'm just doing what I want,” you said as calmly as you could. You were half aware of the breath you were holding and slowly exhaled through your lips as if you hadn't been holding it in.

His tongue was moving inside of his mouth. You saw the movement below his cheek and his eyes moved over your face.

“And what if I do what I want?” The tips of his fingers trailed along your face, practically outlining the heat you felt traveling just below the surface of your skin. His words felt too powerful for you to withstand. The man was an expert in calling bluffs it seemed, and you felt your false confidence slipping the longer he touched you.

“W-What do you want to do?” Had your voice always sounded so thready and uncertain? The hesitancy on your tongue took your words from your lips and jumbled them against your own ears.

Were you really ready for this? Ready to throw all of your rules out the window for this man. Ready to compromise whatever ethics you spent your life practicing for the chance to be his?

The commander leaned into you, his chest flat against you, bringing his warmth close enough to make your own body temperature rise two degrees by mere proximity and the exhale from your lungs pulled your shoulders down and the warmth of his lips along the skin of your neck tingled as he nipped at the space below your ear.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he whispered into your ear and you nodded your head in accord because you felt it too. You felt just how much you missed his lips on your skin, the feeling of strong arms securing you within his hold. You missed this feeling, this man so completely inside your soul that you felt a surge inside of you as he touched you. Almost as if his every touch, every pass of his lips over yours, every gasp of air from his mouth into yours, prodded at something deep inside of your chest that had long been abandoned over the years.

A crackle, a staticky sound lingered somewhere behind you and the ache inside of your chest vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“--[static]-- to Commander, come in.”

“Commander, do you read?” He stiffened instantly at the sound and your vice-like grip around his waist went slack.

He was moving, his heat left you as did his lips and his arms and he reached over you for the radio attached to the center console of the truck. His words in response were inaudible over the pounding of your heart against your ear drums and you straightened your back into the seat to keep out of his way. As he worked, you watched his profile with as much abandon as you had wished you could watch him all the time. Only now, the memory of his lips and his hands on you afforded you a certain amount of liberty to observe him up close without the danger of your crush being discovered.

If was safe to say the cat was well out of the bag now. The dangerous words he spoke, the sexy way he whispered into your ear

_ God, I’ve missed you. _

_ I’ve missed you _

When he said it, it didn't sound the least bit odd, but now that you heard those words again in your mind, something was off.

Missed you?

How could he have missed you? This was the first time you and he had ever shared an intimate moment. This was the first time you had kissed him, he had kissed you, and as far as spending time together, well… in the last few months, he had been a constant in your world. Leaving for short missions with his men, coming back unscathed again and again to your medical tent where in the corner had been set up a sort of on-the-go command center for strategic defenses and attacks on the enemy.

_ “Yes, I have located your absent nurse.” _

_ ”No, she was just standing in a field--” _ He sighed into the mouthpiece of the radio as the static crackled a curt response.

_ ”It’s probably exhaustion. Now how in the fuck do you expect them to take care of my men if you're working them without sleep?” _

It was strange to hear him shouting over the radio, having been so gentle and soft with you mere moments earlier. Even odder to be the subject of his anger. The voice on the radio, your supervisor two levels above took on a defensive tone and you could feel the tension in the commander’s body still that lightly rested over your lap.

_ ”No. I’ll return her after she gets some fucking sleep and no sooner. Over and out.” _

His shoulders shook as he slammed the receiver back into the green box of the radio transmitter wedged between the seats of the jeep. A few switches were hit and the static went silent. He turned it off. During a war and active combat, the commander turned off his radio in a fit of anger about your sleep patterns. He didn't even have to turn it off. He outranked them all. They simply had to follow his orders.

You wrung your hands together and watched his face closely for any clues about his next move. Did you dare tell him that your lack of sleep had little to do with your superiors and had more to do with your own poor coping skills with the war and the resulting nightmares. Namely, as soon as you found yourself drifting, in would pop an image of a bloodied, unconscious face into your mind, or worse, a wailing screaming soldier with a life threatening injury that would consume him slowly.

He was gone from your side of the vehicle and he climbed into the driver's seat, making the jeep engine roar to life and you were off just as soon as you were able to snap your seatbelt back into place.

You knew enough to recognize that as the ride grew less and less bumpy, the thickness of the trees lessened as well. As did the hair turning tight turns he took to avoid things like fallen logs, or giant jeep swallowing puddles of mud. You were definitely heading away from wherever the new camp had been set up.

When you saw a road up ahead you were just too curious to hold your questions.

“Where are you--”

“--there’s a town about 10 miles up this road.” He interrupted you, as if so intune with your moods he knew the exact moment your curiously bubbled up too high to push back down again. “There is a bar that the officers know and above that bar an inn with a shower and a bed. There’s no hot water, but I'm sure you aren't that delicate are you?”

A bed? You felt your mouth suddenly go dry and you looked away from his focused profile as he drove. You could hardly see a damn thing out of the grimy front glass, but It didn't matter, you had to look anywhere that didn't involve having to picture this man, and yourself in a room, alone with a real bed.

“They even have shampoo. Not just those tiny white bars that smell like lye, but real shampoo that bubbles up and washes everything away.” He was still on about the shower and all you could think about was a mattress that would possibly bounce up to meet your back as he pushed you down on top of it, covering you with his warmth and his lips.

The small town was just as he promised, and the inn above the bar was in your sights, accessible through a rickety stairwell in the back. You felt his arm secure around your shoulder in an almost possessive manner as you made your way in between buildings with shady looking locals smoking along the wall. You noticed the hand that wasn’t on you was laid over the pistol in his belt and the threat of danger made your stomach flip, despite the multiple soldiers you saw all over the town, clearly meaning your army had taken it for their own use long ago. Surely the locals wouldn't try anything with an entire army living in their midsts, right?

At the doorway, he paused as you stepped through the open door into a genuine room with a small bed, a makeshift dresser with a mirror and painting on the wall. Your eyes drifted to the square black bible sitting on a nightstand next to the bed and you felt a fresh wave of guilt surge through you.

“You can shower and sleep. I'll be just outside this door if you need anything.” His hand was on the doorknob and you stood in the center of the room as he watched your face and waited for you to acknowledge his words in some way.

You felt frozen. Why wouldn't your head nod or your mouth give an agreement or something? Why did he seem like he wanted to say something to you and why was the pull to him so damn strong?

A thought dawned.

“What did you mean before? When w-we--”

_ kissed _ ...the word stuck in your throat like cement.

“When you said you missed me.” You furrowed your brows and shook your head, “why did you say that?”

He couldn't possibly feel that same sense of familiarity around you as you felt with him, could he?

The commander’s eyes widened marginally and his lips parted, hanging open just crooked enough to look juvenile. Just enough to show his teeth. Those eyes left yours for a second and danced around the room slowly, pausing at the ceiling above before they traveled to the left then to the right. He closed his lips and squinted.

“D-Did I say that?” He looked genuinely confused now and you tilted your head to match his own.

“Don't you remember? You whispered into my ear ‘God, I’ve m-”

“God, I’ve missed you.” He spoke up again. His own words plain as day despite the obvious frown on his face and confusion on his lips. He was taking a step forward and when he let the door go it lazied it's way closed behind him with a click.

“I---” his head was in the clouds now and his eyes were on you but out of focus. “I have missed you, but...how?”

“Do you feel that too?” You whispered and his focus sharpened like a blade, zeroing in on your face like a torpedo having found a target he took two big steps and closed the distance between where you stood lamely in the center of the room refusing to let this go, and where his confusion had taken hold of him.

“What is this?” He said softly with a breath exhaled against your face now with his close proximity.

You shook your head.

“Why do I feel like I've known you before? Why can't I stop thinking about you? Why does your face fill my dreams at night?”

You could feel your heart pounding against your rib cage, beating too hard and too fast. Your hands that had been balled into tight fists at your side fell open as he came closer to you.

“I want you,” he said as his eyes sank heavy into yours, “more than I have ever wanted anything in my life. I want to… make mistakes.” The pained breath he inhaled with his final confession gave away the sin that he was aware of. The one on both of your tongues that neither of you dared to speak of.

Your eyes drifted away from the intense eyes down to look for the flash of metal around his finger.

Only it wasn't there this time. When had he taken it off? In the Jeep? Before he left to search for you? Before he followed you into this hotel room.

“I feel desperate around you.”

That pulled your eyes upward, past the belt with the pistol, past the uniform, dirty from the road, past the firm chest that rose and fell too rapidly, into his face. The dangerous bits of him that were tempting and beautiful even with just a hint of stubble over his lip and on the tip of his chin. His pink lips that naturally turned down at the corners and that you knew tasted just as heavenly as you were now certain you remembered from long ago.

You felt it somewhere inside. Inside your chest and at the spot that ached somewhere in your belly. That's where the memory of him lived.

“I want you to kiss me again,” he took another step and his hand reached out for yours.

“Commander--” you said softly. Your voice held all of the uncertainty you felt inside of your chest, with enough of the wavering from your desire to color the edges.

“I'll be damned to hell. For you, I'll be damned for all eternity. I need you to kiss me again.”

If he would be damned, so would you. You reached for his face and he leaned with you. Anticipating your lips, his eyes closed before yours and he only gave you fractions of a second where time stopped and the warmth of his mouth fit perfectly into yours. The pause was minuscule before his hands were on you.

The dusty, muddy clothing you wore was a nuisance. A damned inconvenience as you sought out his flesh and he yours. A heavy thud as the gun fell to the floor, still holstered and belted within the uniform slacks, gravity took them down easy and in a flash, you had his bare skin against yours.

His eyes were greedy as he ripped your clothing away and as they raked over you, something stirred inside of you when he paused over your stomach just below your navel. You had a birthmark there, a funny straight line that you rarely paid much attention to, yet he fixated on that spot for a moment before you felt the softness of his lips placing tender kisses along the mark.

“I know this mark, from my dreams.” His voice was thicker than you had expected and before you could question him, he was moving on you, pushing your legs open to nestle in between you found his face and his breath and his lips over your own again. Desperate and possessive. Overwhelmed yet insatiable at the same time.

He coated you in warmth and fingertips that left your skin hot and tingling everywhere they touched and you felt consumed by it. The want and the need he had given into. When he pushed inside, joining with you completely and fully, your chest soared with the rightness of this feeling.

He was yours. You knew it deep inside of your soul, that this man was meant for you and you for him.

He was gasping breaths against every inch of your skin he could kiss. Ragged cries of gratification left your lips and when he gripped you tightly around the waist and rolled onto his back, pulling you astride his waist, your union did not separate.

As he filled you with heat, his essence spread through your belly, bringing with it a sense of belonging and when you came undone on top of him you were certain that something that felt so good and so completely perfect must be ordained by God himself.

You were, both fractured apart, finally complete together.

His limbs grasped for you, the physical need had been temporarily sated, but he clung on to your waist with a child like desperation. As if he'd only just gotten you back and you could be snatched from his grasp at any given moment.

The kisses against your skin, lazy and growing heavier along with your tired eyelids spoke of a great love from your memories. A love that transcended years of pain and persisted despite your actual memories that you had been so certain were the only truths in your world. The memories of him, of his love, of his touches and his needs that could only be satisfied by you, were so strong in your sleepy mind that you couldn't help the sweet words and tumbled from your own lips as he laid with his eyes closed, head against your chest, listening to the sounds of your heart beating.

“I love you,” you didn't care if he knew it. You wanted him to know it. You wanted him to take your words deep within his soul and keep them there to protect him from whatever harm the world would throw in his direction.

He shifted, moving his face lower from your chest downward and you felt his lips, his palm, his warm breath over your belly. Over the birthmark, you'd never paid any mind to, yet he swore he remembered from something far away that you no longer doubted.

“I love you too,” he whispered in a low voice against your skin, barely audible from down by your belly. You reached, pulling at him, needing him closer to you and he complied with a crooked grin.

“I can’t hear you down there,” you whined and his grin widened, showing his white teeth with pale pink gums.

“You can't? I said, I--”he was at your neck now, breathing hot and low against your ear, “--love you too.” The declaration was interrupted by tiny bites along the sensitive skin of your neck and you felt the skin of your scalp tighten and prickle with his playful actions.

The sleep caught up with you both quickly. The smiles faded into comfort and security in his arms and he hugged you tightly as he drifted. You let yourself drift too and against all of your expectations, the nightmares were kept at bay. In favor of other, less unpleasant dreams filled with his face, his touch, his eyes and his lips.

The hours of sleep you had with him felt like a gift from the heavens. And the prospect of an actual shower with real shampoo suddenly seemed more enticing than trying to fit in a couple of more hours of sleep. When you moved, the sleeping man next to you also moved he opened his eyes to silently watch you move nakedly around the room.

You didn't much like the idea of putting on the same dirty clothing as you had been wearing before, but honestly, it was better than nothing.

You gasped at the cold water, and the muscles tensing in his arms as he fought the same shocked gasp at the temperature made you giggle. It didn’t matter, he was warm enough for both of you and he was right about the shampoo. It was the kind of luxury item that filled your nose with a pleasant fragrance and washed away every bit of the war that had been sticking to you for months now.

You knew this was coming to an end as you pulled on your uniform, shaking out as much of the dust and dirt as you could before pulling it back on. His eyes followed you as you dressed, and yours followed him as he pulled the uniform back up, buckling the belt and straightening the pistol. As he moved, something small clattered to the floor and you looked down to see a small metal ring fall from his pocket and roll beneath the bed.

Your heart pounded in your chest, and your breathing gave you away. You knew your face was too hot and the prickling of the goosebumps along your skin made the room feel colder than it should feel.

You began to move, dropping down to your knees to peer under the bed for the ring. Somehow needing to touch it, to see it, to verify it’s existence and remind yourself that you had just done what you had just done with someone else’s husband. Your hands were shaking and you felt a strong resistance to your descent.

“No, stop,” he was saying and his eyes pleaded with you and gripped your shoulders hard, pulling you back up. Pulling you into his arms, pulling you into a tight embrace that felt like the sunshine.

“B-But,” you mumbled against the firmness of his chest and you could feel him shaking his head.

“No, leave it. It doesn't matter. Just forget about that. I have you and that’s all I need now, please believe me.” He was backing up, his arms so strong and tight around you and you gave in, following the man you loved out of the room, you left that tiny reminder behind wherever it landed under the bed of a well used crappy hotel room in this far away country. He left the room, holding you tightly in his arms, leaving behind every promise he had ever made to her. Whoever she was.

You shook your head. Trying your hardest to rid yourself of those thoughts and the guilt that bubbled inside your chest.

Outside of the room was quiet.

Eerily so, the town seemed much less than before and you wondered where all the locals and soldiers had gone off to. Perhaps it was just the time of day.

Back in the jeep, he drove silently, a hand gripping yours tightly as he drove, until the road ended and he had to drive more aggressively through the forest to reach the new camp. The radio was still off and after a moment of silence, you began to hear the first bits of far way gunfire.

The commander’s eyes widened and he quickly flipped the radio on, filling your ears with shouting and static that definitely didn't sound like a drill. Your stomach dropped. It sounded like a warning and he turned up the volume and grabbed at the receiver, shouting into the radio for status reports or anything that would tell him what was going on.

The problem, it seemed was at the new camp. Something about an ambush. Something about pulling out and definitely a huge loss of life, both soldiers and the medical personnel. Only a few had escaped and were radioing for reinforcements.

The roar of the jeeps engine was loud and the commander shouted over the sound for you to grab the helmet in the back seat and put it on quickly as he changed course and began to move away from the camp. You had nearly arrived it seemed but the danger was too great. The fighting was all around you now and you pulled the helmet over your head, glancing at the black of his hair and the way it flew in the wind as he drove.

This was his helmet. He would be unprotected if he went in like this. You shook your head and pulled it off, plopping it over his head quickly and he shot you a look with both hands tightly on the wheel.

“Just leave me here, I’ll hide somewhere,” you said but he was adamant in his refusal.

“Absolutely not,” he said with a growl and he reached for the helmet, pulling it off his head and slamming it over your head. “Keep it on.” He said firmly and you huffed in anger in your seat. This made no sense. You weren't the one who would be fighting. He would. He needed the helmet. There was a rendezvous point a few miles up, but the trip through the forest would be dangerous. The jeep would give away your location easily with its noise he explained the situation quickly as he pulled to a stop and began packing up weapons from the back of the jeep into a bag.

“Can you shoot?” He said as he tossed a pistol in your direction and you nodded your head gripping the handle tightly with two trembling hands.

“Stay with me,” he whispered and you were off. He moved silently as he walked, pulling you along when you stumbled and felt like you couldn't go on with the way your heart was raging inside your chest.

His breathing remained silent and steady, his eyes on high alert for enemies hidden through the trees. You noticed he communicated with you through hand signals you had seen during training. You never thought you'd actually have to use any of this, yet here you were, stopping and ducking silently when you saw him signal back at you from behind a tree.

You could hear something just on the other side, something that sounded too dangerous for you to want to go any further and you gripped the pistol and slammed your eyes shut, saying a silent prayer for this to just stop. For the men on the other side of this wall of thick shrubbery to simply leave and let you two pass unnoticed so you could reach the rendezvous point. You knew it had to be close. It just had to. This couldn't possibly go on for much longer. Or perhaps you couldn't go on for much longer.

Your eyes were closed for too long because you felt him touch you and you jumped at the contact a split second before you felt him place a warm palm over your mouth securely, keeping you from making the shocked noise you almost made.

He was looking into your eyes. His expression serious, despite the worry and softness you knew you could sense behind his irises and he leaned his face close to yours.

“You’re doing so great, my love.” He said in a barely audible tone. You read his lips mostly as he spoke and you nodded your head as he smiled the tiniest smile at you. It was a forced smile. Meant to keep you going. You could do this. You would do this for him.

“Wait here,” he was gone for a second, slipping further down the muddy pathway you had both been following and you could tell he was trying to see what was waiting for him on the other side. From the sound of it, it seemed like there were at least ten men there. All armed and talking in some language you didn't understand. You heard a bit of laughter and the district lack of gunfire led you to believe that they had already taken the camp, already scouted the area and believed that the threat had been neutralized.

You wondered just how many of your friends and coworkers had gotten out. The guilt inside of your belly flashed up hot. You had been spared the attack. Your life was still yours to hold in your hands because you hadn't been there.

The commander returned, his belly coated in the thick black mud that covered this horrible place.

“There’s a space where we can pass. We have to do it quickly, and we must go now.”

He moved and you followed closely behind. Every step he took was expertly placed and you didn't hear a single sound from him as his eyes sharpened and ears listened for signs of trouble. You did your best honestly but every one of your movements felt too slow, too loud, too risky and the noise from the other side of the trees suddenly quieted down.

The commander stilled in an instant and you froze, a hand clasped tightly over your own mouth to try and control your breathing. It wasn't working well. You were too scared and the trembling in your hands made the pistol rattle. His eyes widened in alarm when he must have sensed the movement before you did and he was running in an instant. You felt his hand grip yours tightly as he bolted running fast and pulling you noisily along with him through thick trees. You heard loud shouting behind you.

And then the gunfire began. The commander pulled harder, making you move faster than you thought your legs would carry you and when you landed wrong in a hole on the forest floor you stumbled. You only half felt the sting in your ankle and he was yanking you roughly up, making you move again.

He was fast. You were sure, had you not been holding him back the lead he had on them would have been greater, but the ache in your ankle was glowing red hot with each hard step you landed on it. Still, your body moved.

Up in front of you, you could see a clearing. You felt something pinching at your shoulder and you looked down to see a bit of blood beginning to seep through the white of your uniform. It burned hot like your ankle did and you kept moving.

 

The clearing felt wrong. There were no trees to cover you and nothing to duck down behind but he moved so fast there was no way you could have stopped him.

Once you made it past the tree lines the gunfire from the other side of the field erupted, shooting loud and rapid, taking out your pursuers one by one as you and he ran with every last ounce of willpower you had left in you.

The fire from the thick trees was slowing, with the occasional zoom near your head just grazing your helmet. Ahead was a rough dirt ledge. Over, a makeshift bunker dug into the ground and clearly his men on the inside of that bunker providing the much needed cover fire.

It was in your sights and your foot hit the dirt mound with a force as you felt a rough shove from behind you and the momentum carried you over and you fell.

The oxygen raked at the inside of your lungs and he was right behind you. Mere seconds after you hit the ground you looked up to see the muddy brown of his uniform casting a shadow over the sunshine that flooded your eyes and made you squint hard as you looked up. His boot hit the dirt mound and he was falling as something popped. The sound of something smacking against him echoed out and his face changed from steadfast determination to something else. Was that surprise? Pain? Confusion?

He was falling hard and fast and you knew. You knew from the look on his face as he fell what that was that popped against him, a fraction of a second before he made it inside the bunker. He had pushed you inside first, probably breaking his momentum and slowing him down just enough for it to happen.

The bullet hit him in the back and he was falling.

He fell on top of you with a dull thud, the weight of him pushed the air right out of your lungs and you gasped and choked for oxygen as you pushed hard against him, quickly searching over his back for the wetness you knew would be there.

Hot, red, sticky wetness grew in the center of his back and he groaned as he choked on something inside. From the blood that you saw at the corner of his mouth, you knew it was his lungs and who knows what else that had been damaged, out in this hole dig in the ground in the middle of a fucking field, without any of your supplies, you screamed out at the top of your lungs. Still gasping for air from being winded the sound wasn't loud enough.

“Medic!” You cried, your voice hoarse and ineffective and you turned him on his side, on the injured side so gravity would help keep his lung inflated while you screamed.

Was the bullet still inside? Your fingers prodded his chest, searching through the mud for any signs of an exit wound and your tears clouded your vision when you found none.

“Medic!” You screamed louder, begging for anyone to hear you over the sounds of the guns but none came.

“There are none!” You heard someone shout back at you and you felt the commander's hand grab ahold of yours.

“D-Don't--” he mouthed, unable to get the sound out without any air. You leaned closer to him, desperate for his words to tell that you he was okay. To tell you that he just needed a minute and he would get back up.

“--cry, my love--”

“No,” you begged against his face. He was fading too quickly. Too fast for you to save him.

“I’ll see you again,” he whispered against your face and you nodded in understanding as you touched his face, red marks from your hands smeared along his pretty face and he smiled for you.

“Kiss me before I go.” You leaned into him, and the softness of his lips gave against your own as no kiss was returned.

He was gone.

You could feel the strike of God’s judgement hitting you hard. Making you pay for your sins.

His judgement was swift and it was complete.

 

And he was gone.

_ 23 August, 1945 _


	2. ACT II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Adultery, Multiple Major Character Deaths, A rollercoaster of emotions

**_ACT II_ **

 

Your sleep was fitful, yet the dream was so complete and all-consuming when you finally pulled your eyelids open and looked up at the darkness surrounding you, your reality shifted and fractured as the memories came back to you.

Your face, the pillow, and the collar of your nightshirt were all soaked with tears and as you blinked again, trying to find some light inside this place that would give you a sense of bearing you found nothing but pain.

The reality that hit you in the face was offensive.

He was dead.

The man you loved with every bit of your existence for such a maddeningly short amount of time, was gone and you were left to somehow continue on with this life without him.

The memories were changing as they flew. A flock of sparrows, each moving quicker than the last, you reached through your mind to catch them and hold on. Yet with each new one you frantically grasped, another flew by, threatening to escape completely until the feeling of his fingers along your skin, the touch of his lips against your birthmark, the sound of his voice as he whispered into your ear, and the vibration of his laughter along your neck, were all gone forever. Everything about him you wanted so desperately to hold on too moved too fast and the threat of losing it all made more tears fall as you wept into your bed.

Your bed…

Your fingers trailed along the rough fabric. A stiff mattress filled with straw below you, somehow simultaneously familiar and foreign...why was this your resting space?

Why was this darkness so consuming and why couldn't you quite remember the sequence of events from the night before that would have resulted in you ending up in a bed such as this, and in a room as dark as this one.

The commander’s face flashed through your mind, like a phantom with piercing eyes and lips that called out to you in that voice, only the longer you dwelled on your surroundings the weaker his essence became.

Would you lose this too? Would you lose his eyes? His face? The straight black hair that blew in the wind when he held onto the wheel of that strange vehicle, while sounds from spaces far away spoke to him in garbled staticky sounds.

Your stomach lurched when you sat up, sending a wave of nausea through your body that covered your head in a sick green, making your dark room spin. You recognized the way your mouth watered and you leaped from your bed, suddenly more familiar with your surroundings as you found your nightstand and the small empty wash basin you kept there at night. You’d made it just in time for your dinner to make a reappearance and you vomited until the all-consuming waves quieted down.

How many nights had it been now, since nausea had taken you in the early morning hours before the sun had even dared to show its face?

You coughed hard, trying to rid yourself of the acrid taste at the back of your throat and on shaking hands and knees, crawled back to the wooden table that sat beside your bed. Back to the cup of water you knew you would find there.

You didn’t dare give a name to the reason for your current sickness, even if deep down inside your belly, your hand often found a place to lightly rest, and pat reassuring words to whoever might be listening in there. Memories flooded through your mind's eye of the commander and his love filling you mere hours before he was stolen from you. The vision of his pretty face and those eyes that he promised you would see again. The irony in his words, would you only see him again through the generation he must have blessed your body with?

You shook at your head. Your reality and that ghost in your dream were dueling for your attention. Both screaming that one was true and the other making the same claims. Yet here you say, firmly rooted in your darkened reality with a very real basin of sick that needed to be taken care of.

You heard the soft knock on your door, seconds before the creek of the wood opening and a housemaid peaked her head inside, the candle in her hands illuminating her face and casting deep shadows over her features.

“Are you okay miss?” The reverence was clear in her voice when she addressed you and you were sure she suspected what you also knew. Especially since you had yet to ask for your monthly napkins.

“I’m fine, I’ve just had a bad dream,” you struggled to calm your breathing and she entered the room cautiously, bringing the light with her that you had searched so frantically for earlier.

The more you thought about it, the stranger that dream really had been. Weird gadgets that could produce their own light without fire. Loud popping weapons that were capable to causing so much pain and destruction, yet small enough to hold in the palm of a hand. Voices coming from small boxes wired to even bigger boxes on wheels that could move faster than a horse and a carriage, and didn't even need to be pulled by anything at all.

The visions of the dream were fading fast and his face that smiled back at you struck you with just how odd he looked out of his usual clothes, wearing such a drab green color that blended in with the forestry behind him.

The tears you felt, now dried on your cheeks, the emotions you felt, so strong and devastating when it happened, now seemed almost silly to you when you thought about it.

Him -- dead? You'd just spend the night in his bed with his hands lovingly caressing your face as he filled your head with promises of his never-ending love. The memory of his desperate lips erased the pain you woke up with and brought on a warmth that spread right through your chest down into your belly.

Despite the dim lighting you still caught the glance she made at your hand that rested there.

“The king requests your presence at breakfast. Shall I tell him you are ill?”

“Absolutely not. If my king requests me, I will be there.” You voiced your confidence, with just a bit of hoarseness left over from the early morning retching and she lowered the candle a touch as she leaned in closer.

“You know he would be most pleased.” Of course, she knew. She was with you nearly constantly these last months and although you tried not to get too attached to the maids, this one was softer than the others. This one seemed better at reading you than some of the others.

“Not yet,” you shook your head, recognizing the delicate nature of such things. You also recognized the very real threats that surrounded you at all times. “Not with  _ her _ still in the castle.”

“Of course,” the maid bowed once and dropped her eyes, turned to set her candle down on a surface by the door and left.

You had at least an hour before the sun would rise, yet the tightness in your chest, leftover from your dream pulled at you hard.

You needed to see him with your own eyes. The commander was fading now and your king was calling to you.

In the dim candlelight you could make out the inner contents of your wardrobe and you slipped on the silk overcoat he had gifted to you. It was red and much too luxurious of an item to be of any practical use at all, but you like the way it felt against your skin as you wore it around your chambers.

The corridors were mostly empty. Servants scurrying way as you passed, no one bothered to stop you anymore. Not when you walked these halls to his room like you belonged there always. In fact, there was usually only one person in this entire palace who dared have an opinion on who’s room you visited at night, and she was nothing more than a filthy gnat buzzing around your head. A political pawn who weaseled her way into a marriage with a king who could never love her.

Not the way he loved you.

You wouldn't think of her today. You were going to see his face and he would be alive and breathing and watching you with those intense eyes like only he could.

He wasn't expecting you yet. He had called for you to join him for breakfast yet here you stood, hand braced to knock hours before the dawn, the pull against your heart too strong to resist.

You knocked twice, lightly enough that if he had been asleep, it should not have disturbed him.

You heard no sound from within the room and pushed the heavy wooden door open slowly, entering the forechamber of his private room. The final space visitors were allowed to enter unless expressly invited in by the king himself.

There was a stillness in this room. A clean quiet that usually coated you from head to toe as you made your way inside, but somehow in the dark before the dawn, the silence felt magnified.

Your body seemed to be making too much noise for such a sacred space and you slowed your breathing as you stepped beyond the threshold toward where you knew his bed would be found.

The moon shone through the big picture windows, painting the entire room in a blue faint glow that your eyes adjusted to nearly instantly.

You could make out the shape of him in his bed, curled up with thick down blankets gripped tightly within his arms, eyes closed, lips parted as he breathed and that blue glow illuminating the clarity of his skin. Dark eyebrows, dark eyelashes, dark hair in stark contrast and in perfect proportion to his pretty face.

The man was breathtaking. In fact, you had to lay a hand over your mouth to keep your gasp contained as you watched the steady rise and fall of his chest. He was alive and so beautiful. Alive and breathing. Alive and as real as the memories that danced through your mind.

You had to touch him. Your fingers craved the warmth you hoped you would find in his skin.

Your hand, against his face, trailing lightly along his cheekbones as he spoke to you for the last time, a wet hot sticky red marking his perfect features that screwed together in pain as he told you he would see you again. Told you not to cry. Asked you to kiss him goodbye.

Your mind must have still wanted to play tricks on you, for he was not injured. He merely slept, ready to be awoken as proof that he was unharmed, yet the wetness you felt in your eyes did not listen. The tears that ran down your face, stopped up your nose, made your headache and your heart hurt as if you had been the one shot, all of these emotions that coursed through you with the memory that felt too real to discount. They were too strong.

By the time your fingertips reached his face, they were trembling, and when you felt the softness of his warm skin you choked out a quiet sob.

He was safe. He was alive and he was safe. Maybe you couldn't save the commander at the time, but you were looking at his face and touching his skin, your king was safe.

The touch on his face pulled his eyes open and only seconds passed as he stared at your face, a sleepy sort of confusion on his features, before a widening hit those eyes and alarm took over.

“What is it? What has happened?” His voice was thick with sleep and your tears flowed too freely for you to stop them now. The dams had already burst and your face screwed together as you shook your head, recognizing that you were now crying openly in front of him after startling him awake.

The king. Your king, and you, nothing more than a concubine of his, dared to enter his bedchamber and wake him well before you were supposed to meet with him...because you had a bad dream and had temporarily lost your mind.

You felt beside yourself. As if you were watching yourself behaving in such a preposterous way from the outside. Unable to stop, and even less able to comprehend what could have possibly possessed you to do this.

“I’m sorry...I don’t k-know what has come over me,” you struggled with making your words comprehensible through the sobs that raged inside your chest and strong hands gripped around your arms as those eyes tried to reach yours, which you now tried desperately to evade.

You had made a mistake. You had forgotten your station and taken liberties that would surely be the end of anyone else, but there was something in his searching eyes that made you want to look at him, made you want to reach for his warmth and wrap your arms tightly around his chest.

You had nearly no self-control left when faced with the prospect of inhaling his smell so closely, so deeply and you lunged into him, a lingering desperation that would not be sated by merely seeing his face, you needed your every sense satisfied and flooded with this man.

His breath left his chest in an agonizingly slow exhale, well controlled, yet somehow raw sounding over the top of your head. His chest, his sides, his back just below the palms of your hand were heated. Well warmed from the hours asleep in his cozy bed and your trembling hands ran along the skin of his back, searching for something. Seeking out what you were certain you would not find, surely not...it was just a dream. Just a haunting memory from another life that should not affect you so.

“You are trembling,” he whispered over your head, warm arms encasing your shoulders, making you squeeze against him tighter. “What has left you so unnerved in the middle of the night?”

You couldn’t get enough of his crisp smell. Clean and well set in, the smell of him was warmth. Like a comforting fire and a warm meal. Designed to heal you from the inside so you might possibly get through whatever life decided to toss your way. You shook your head against his chest, unable to bring voice to the words of his death that had destroyed you during the night. To speak of such things felt all but impossible.

“Did someone hurt you? Who would dare? Won't you tell me so that I may deal a swift punishment?”

“I dreamt of your death, my lord.” You spoke against his skin and your words took only a moment before he stiffened in your arms. Then a small chuckle left his lips, dancing over your head as the tightness with which he held you went slack.

“Ahh, did my darling have a bad dream?” The brevity in his voice did little to stop the tears that still fell from your eyes and you were certain that if you pulled your face up from his chest you would find his nightshirt a mess, and your face a puffy red disaster.

Hushing hands, designed to pacify, rubbed a slow and steady pathway down your back and he grew quiet as your weeping continued.

“Are you ready to tell me about it?” His patient whisper into the darkness above your head felt like a salve, ready to receive your every word and bring an end to your suffering once and for all. Yet when you finally forced yourself to pull back from the warmth of his chest, where the steady thrumming of his beating heart reminded you of his safety, you felt the mess on your face. You were still sniffling too much to bring your voice under enough control to speak and you felt him reaching for his blanket to wipe at the mess of tears on your face.

“Goodness, you’ll be the end of me,” he said, mostly to himself as he wiped at the moisture. You could feel the hiccups inside your chest as your diaphragm constricted involuntarily and a brief upset in your stomach surged for a moment.

It was time to calm yourself. This was no way to act in front of your king. The slow steady breathing you forced inside your lungs helped some and with your eyes closed, you could feel the tension inside your chest beginning to settle.

“Come now, I hate seeing you so upset. Will you at least tell me how I died?” You looked into his imploring face, with eyebrows lifted in the way he did when asking you a question, not demanding for your obedience but merely asking. His face was well beyond the stages of sleep, the corners of his lips pouted down. Exaggerated and adorable. Beseeching and nonjudgmental. You’d do anything for this face.

“There was a war. You were shot, my lord.” You blinked into the words, finding their explanation lacking the more you considered the strange metal contraption tucked into the commander’s belt. “With a gun.”

“A gun?” His eyebrows screwed together with the strange word, shaking his head.

“It explodes with a loud booming sound and a projectile shoots out,” you explained softly, surprised at just how many details you remembered from the dream about the strange weapon that caused his demise.

“Ahh, like a hand cannon? Big cumbersome thing, about this big?” His hands extended as far out as they could go and you looked from one hand to the other before shaking your head.

“Small enough to fit in one hand,” you said, making a fist and sticking your pointed finger out toward him. You mouthed a pop and his serious expression faltered along with your confidence to explain the details of your dream. With your confidence that fell so did your focus. His eyes always seemed to see too much of you too easily.

His warm hand wrapped around your hand, bringing your eyes back up into his and he pulled, using your surprise to rest your hand over his warm chest. You caught a tiny smile on his lips as the pounding of his heart reverberated through the palm of your hand.

“Your imagination is admirable.”

Imagination.

Something that felt so real, so devastatingly tangible had been nothing more than the make-believe workings of your sleeping mind.

You had been so certain of it, yet the evidence of the contrary sat in front of you, striking eyes, half open and watching your face too closely as only he could.

“I dreamt of you, as well,” his eyes took on a distant look with his words and you inhaled a slow breath that hitched once when your insides hiccuped lazily, only half-hearted remnants of being so upset lingering inside your heart.

“Not nearly as tragic as yours; although with the direction it was headed, I do believe the interruption itself might count as a great tragedy.”

The vagueness of his tongue brought a smile to your lips which he mirrored in an instant and his hands moved the blankets that surrounded him as he pulled you closer. The magnetic pull of his body felt even stronger than his searching hands and you molded against him, letting him pull the warm covers over you as you occupied the king’s bed, your silk robe falling open, your bare legs a tangle with his, nearly impossible to extricate.

“Now that I recall,” he spoke against your forehead, close enough to feel the movement of his jaw and brush of soft lips along your eyebrow when he spoke. “It was a very strange dream. You were not present at the start, it was--” the sudden pause in his easy speech made your mind sharpen as you braced your heart.

He felt you stiffen, of course, he often caught on to microscopic changes in your mood and you felt his arms tighten their hold on you as he brushed against your back, rubbing his reassuring warmth into you. “--it was her, the queen. Only in this phantom land, I had made the decision to break our union.” As soon as he spoke the words, you felt the vibration of a small laugh from the center of his chest.

You did not laugh. Your heartfelt the giddiness of the prospect that he would have some control over who he had married, but you absolutely did not dare to dream of such foolishness. You definitely didn't revel in it. It was a sin. It was treason. To dream of breaking the union of the king and queen, yet as he spoke of such villainous topics, he laughed, deep inside his chest, he laughed at the very thought.

Oh to be so free.

“Decision?” You said, simply unable to help yourself. Since when had any of his life ever been his decision?

“Right? Preposterous. I merely decided that I didn't wish to have her as my wife--unadorned by my royal crest, or scribed in my own blood, but merely with a quill and ink...I endorsed with my own hand, onto a ledger.”

Your disbelief matched his.

“War did not erupt. I was not struck down by the heavens. The nation did not dissolve. I did not lose my head. I merely removed an ornament from around my finger and I shared a drink with commoners.”

You pulled your face back, to better catch sight of his and he turned to face you. He knew too much. The slack of your jaw, as you worked the tip of your tongue along the inside of your cheek, his eyes caught it all. You knew better than to give any real consideration to fantasies such as this. They were just that, impossible dreams that would have no place in your head.

Whatever he had seen on your face took his eyes away from you for a moment. His chest rose and fell with a deep breath as he forced the wicked fantasy far away. Tossed far off over the horizon to be long buried below a thousand years.

“You appeared shortly after that, looking--” These pauses he took always meant something was coming and you sat up straighter, pulling your chin higher to watch his face as he spoke. “--positively odd. Strange hair. Articles of clothing not meant for a woman, yet somehow feminine and just--” he looked into your face, losing the nerve to continue with the scathing review of your appearance in his dream. You felt the small pout of your bottom lip, somehow disappointment that your appearance was so poorly received.

“--and just beautiful.”

You watched him closely for signs of deception. Any clues in his eyes that might tell you that he was merely pacifying you with the compliment, despite what you knew about the king and his near inability to pacify anyone merely for the sake of their ego, you still searched those eyes. He blinked slowly and seemed to be watching your face with something going on behind those eyes.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered and his hands were moving below the blankets. You always felt too affected by his touch. You liked to think of yourself as a strong person, yet he could always make you crumble with a single touch of his fingertips against your bare skin.

“I do have to say,” the softness of his lips pressed against your neck as his arms wrapped around your waist and he squeezed you into his warmth. “You felt a bit different in my dream than you do now.”

“How so, my lord?”

He pushed the blankets away now, pulling slowly at the tie of the robe you wore before peeling it away from your frame.

The nightshirt you wore below was far from your finest garment, and normally an evening with the king wouldn't be as plain as this. But you hadn't exactly planned to be in his bed tonight. He had just been with you the evening before, surely he had been satiated enough. You found it difficult to believe that he could want you just as intensely as you did him.

“You seemed harder somehow. Cautious and cold. Almost battle-worn.” His words were spoken through quick puffs of breath as he explored new bits of your skin.

“And you were so very bold in your actions. You did some things with your mouth that I have never experienced before… I--” Your eyes were closed as he spoke and try as you might you couldn't quite comprehend the events he was vaguely referring to from his dream. “--I do believe something like that would land you in the dungeons here.”

“But this,” he spoke into the softness of your belly and a coldness flashed over your head as if someone splashed you with water. You stiffened, your eyes widened as you sat up on your elbows. You could hear your heart pounding inside your eardrums and you were certain the increase in your breathing was detectable in the quietude of this bedchamber.

Could he tell? Had your belly finally swollen to the point where he noticed you carried the child of his love within your bones? Did he know?

His hand laid flat over the bare spot of skin just below your navel and his eyes opened to look up into yours for a moment as he stilled his movements entirely. It was at least ten seconds before he spoke again. You knew because you held your breath and kept time in your head. He watched your face the entire time. Did he see the heat that coated your face with truth burning a fiery pathway from your cheeks down your neck to your chest?

“My love feels soft and warm here.” His eyes did not leave yours and despite the scrutiny, his lips only occupied themselves with kisses. There were no accusations or interrogations made from that mouth. He was patient with you.

The love was slow and generous. The sleepiness of the morning drawing out his every movement at a near maddening pace and in the afterglow of his love he held you tighter than he had in the past.

With his head laid against your chest, he listened to the sound of your heart beating for him. It's only tune was his name. It's only rhythm was your love.

“What do you keep from me, my love?”

You had found yourself drifting some, cocooned in the comfort of his arms, his question floated over your head and settled lazily against your closed eyelids. The sweetness you heard in his voice was a gentle coaxing, begging you to open your eyes and your lips and tell him exactly what your secret was.

When you opened your eyes you could see the beginnings of light filtering through the windows.

“Is it something wonderful?” He sang in a slow yet playful melody. “Something precious and something new?”

You could feel the slow movement of his hand as he traveled from between your breasts down, trailing lightly over your belly and you puffed out a tiny laugh.

It must have sounded like relief to his ears.

He could always read you too easily.

“Yes, it is something wonderful, my lord.” You laid a hand over his and you felt him stiffen when you touched him. He moved to get a look at you and you rolled onto your back from your side, his eyes were suddenly wide on your face. Lips hung open and slowly, you saw a crooked gummy smile take over his face.

“Truly?” His eyes were everywhere, dancing from your face down to your belly and up again as if he couldn't decide where to look first. His gentle hands touched you in wonder and your chest swelled with a sudden burst of emotion as you covered your face with both hands to hide the wide smile there. “You are giving me a child.”

His quiet only lasted for a second, before you heard an anxious tension in his voice with his next question.

“Are you alright? Are you feeling ill, or is the baby--” his speech was fast, pausing mid-question to throw his head back and focus his attention on the ceiling above him with a wide grin.

“A baby.” The quiet was back again and you couldn't hold the elation that brought your laughter into this room.

“I need to call the doctor. You must be checked thoroughly-- I will call my personal physician right away.” He was standing now, rushing out of the bed, still completely naked as he moved with purpose. You gasped mid laughter as you leaped from the sanctity of the covers to catch him before he gave a handmaid a heart attack out in the hallway.

“Clothing, my lord.” You chased after him, quickly reaching for the robes you saw carefully set out on a dressing stool at the foot of his bed. You opened the garment and tossed it over his shoulders just in time to see him release the brass handle of his bedroom door and look down with an adorably surprised look on his face.

You hastily tied your own robe closed mere moments before the big heavy door swung open and he burst into the hallway with determination directing his actions.

The sun was up, shining bright light into the well-manicured courtyard visible through windows in the hallway. You could practically hear the morning birds singing their songs through the clear glass and feel the cool breeze floating through your hair. The sight was beautiful and you caught rested your palm over your stomach; amazed that you could find so much beauty in the world in a single place.

He was making a fuss now. Speaking loudly and with a grand voice that echoed through the hallway, demanding his physician; no, the best physicians in the land be brought to his room at once as scurrying staff ran off in a panic, most likely thinking the worst.

“What is this about needing a physician...Is the king ill?” A voice called out from the opposite end of the hallway, chilling your back with her shrill voice, you dropped your head and pulled your robe closed as tightly as you could to fight the cold you felt all over your body.

The warmth from the courtyard was no match for this cold that took coated your mood with its foulness.

He spun on his heels, eyes wide and surprised as if he had merely forgotten that the marriage vows he had taken were actually not with you, but with the woman doing her best to hide the scowl on her face at the sight of you in the king’s presence.

“I assure you, I am quite well.” His voice paled along with his cheeks.

“Then why all the fuss for a physician, your majesty? Don't tell me you have done so for a  _ concubine _ .” Her words felt sharp and pointed and you noticed the small step he took in your direction, standing in between the two of you, perhaps to absorb some of their effects in your stead.

Your hands balled into tight fists at your side and you tried to ignore the steady stream of air that escaped where her talons had poked tiny holes in your good mood. The longer you stood, the more you felt your shoulders beginning to sag as gravity wanted to pull you down. Collapsing in on yourself. Whatever happiness had filled you so, gone, poof...deflated and dull.

“You may return to your quarters,” the king was speaking to you, his face still not looking in your direction as he kept a well-trained eye on the queen, yet his voice tossed the order over his shoulder.

“Yes, run along, child.” The misplaced brevity in her voice hardly covered the contempt you heard.

You dipped your head and pivoted your heels to leave as you had been told. Your feet felt sticky as if each step away from him required more physical exertion than should be needed. Yet your legs moved. It was the king’s order after all.

“I trust you have not forgotten about our sacred union this evening, my lord.” The serpentine shrillness of her voice crawled against your back as she spoke quickly and at a volume designed to reach your retreating ears. Each step felt heavier when she was speaking to him in that voice and a risked glance you look back at the pair showed the undeniable tension in his face. He had a hard set to his jaw and had taken a step back and away from the woman whom he had been promised to since he was just old enough to walk.

“Of course,” he said in so low a voice that left you wondering if he kept his words low for your sake, or for his own. As if mere denial had any power at all.

“How fortuitous for the doctor to be arriving soon, for I am sure I will be feeling quite sick by the end of today.” His volume had lifted and with the insult, you saw her physically recoil with a hand over her mouth and eyes wide with shock. The look in her eyes was merely a flash. Shock changed quickly into anger and you saw it take hold of her face and twist it into something menacing. Something threatening and something in your gut told wanted to shout. Wanted to scream and rush to him, telling him to watch himself, watch this woman, watch the games he was playing and to stop underestimating the dangers that lingered around him.

Instead, your hallway was nearing. Your legs carried you away from the exchange between a husband and a wife who united nations with their sacred union and whose citizens prayed with all of their existence for an heir to be born of.

The day dragged into the evening and your room was quiet. Your meal was warm and too fragrant, turning your stomach as you pushed the plate away. Even your tea felt too bitter on your tongue tonight. Your bed, usually so ready to receive your tired body felt stiff and cold. Your tossing only annoyed you further until you were certain no sleep would come to you tonight.

The quiet knock on your door was a welcome distraction from your own mind and you found a maid of the king calling.

Calling for you.

On a sacred union night.

“The king calls for you,” she said with eyes cast down.

“How could he possibly--” you shook your head, unable to fully understand how you could dare to join him in his bedchamber, tonight of all nights. The night designated by God himself, or so the church had declared in their doctrine, to be the most fruitful.

“He is in the baths.” Her voice was minuscule and you felt a sinking in your belly.

You were quick for your outer robes and out the door in an instant. Having only witnessed his bath the evening after a union once, you knew-- you knew that he called for you out of desperation.

How long had he been in? Your feet moved as quietly as you could manage on the marble floor.

Would his skin be rubbed raw? Red and weeping from his efforts to cleanse himself? Would he hear your voice and stop at once or would you have to pull the pumice stone from his hands with force?

The door was closed and a maid with worry on her face let you in without a breath of hesitation. The sound of water splashing on the inside, steam rising up from the scalding water and the king somewhere within the haze.

“My lord?”

There was a soft grunting sound. The sounds of effort and the scent of heated lye soap filled your nose. The grunting did not stop, but changed with small whimpers and whiney complaints.

“It doesn't come off,” he said in annoyance. “I can still smell her.”

His skin was red and angry. Pruned fingertips gripped the white bar and rubbed roughly along his arms, his legs, his chest, and abdomen. You could see the milky white haze in the water that surrounded him. The water was thick with dissolved soap already used, yet he reached for more, desperate to rid himself of the action itself from his recent memory.

“My lord,” you said again a bit louder but he could not hear you.

You didn't see any blood yet and felt instantly thankful that the rough pumice stone laid just out of his reach.

“My lord,” you repeated again, hoping to break the spell so he could look into your face and stop this assault on his skin. The soap dropped and sunk into the water below and he reached for the tray that held the others.

You extended your hand, touching his soaked fingers before he could grab it.

“My love,” you said softly, feeling the affection your felt inside your soul take over your mind and your tongue as you spoke the word. The word that lived deep within your heart and threatened to consume you with every breath you took of every single day. With every glance of his eyes and touch of his lips against yours, you felt positively enslaved to it.

Yet you never dared to speak to him in such an intimate way. He was your lord. Your king, your commander, your ruler. To speak to your king without his title was unheard of.

He was motionless as the word danced around his head. Having already exited your lips you couldn't push it back inside of your parted lips even if you wanted to. It already existed. There was simply no going back from existence.

His wet fingers twitched within your hand for a second before he moved, slipping them between your own fingers he closed his hand within yours and he pulled. A tiny tug, begging you to step closer to the edge of the bath.

He was reaching. Wet arms attached to wet hands, he pulled harder, wrapping his arms tightly around your waist, you stumbled into him as his head met your belly and his arms constricted tighter.

“Say it again,” he whined quietly against your wet nightshirt. Your head fell back and your eyes closed as he clung to you. “Say it again, I order you to.” He pleaded into your belly.

“My love, you are clean. It's time to get out of the bath now and come into my arms.” It came so naturally from your lips, the sweet nurturing words for him. He was raising himself, braced with shaking legs and holding on to your arms. Within his eyes, you saw exhaustion and the absence of the hot water made him shake and tremble as he stepped away from it.

You reached for his robe, held back by his hands that reached only for you, you couldn't quite grasp the dry garment.

“I don't want that,” he complained, pulling at the tie around your waist that held your own outer garment in place. It fell open his arms slipped inside, sliding along the thin fabric of your nightshirt, you felt fingertips pushing the fabric away as he sought out the warmth of your dry skin. Your own clothing would have to do for both of you. You used your robe to wrap around his back and dry his skin and warm him through.

Despite his exhaustion and the temporary slip into madness as he tried to rid himself of the ghosts that haunted him once a month, you could still feel the strength well inside his muscles as he gripped you tightly and buried his face in your neck. Each deep breath he took filled his nose with only the smell of you. He seemed to be coming back into himself the tighter he clung to you and you found yourself lifted off of your feet. You wrapped your legs around his waist and allowed him to carry you as he moved out of his washing rooms further into the room that you knew connected to his bedchamber.

His bed was unmessed, untouched, and unslept. You knew the monthly unions did not take place in here. He would never allow such a thing. This was your space and this was your man.

“Make me smell like you,” he whispered into your parted lips with just a tinge of residual madness in his eyes as he pressed himself into you and you complied. Erasing the memory of her touch with your entire being as you called out the sweet words and love notes you had pulled straight from your heart just for him.

You weren't satisfied until he was smiling again. Looking at you through sleepy eyelids as he giggled and whispered gentle promises into your ear.

“If it’s a boy, he will be king. I promise you, our son will be king.” He was sleepy now, talking slower with his hands rubbing small circles along your belly and you hummed in agreement.

“And if it’s a girl?”

“She will have your smile. Oh, she will be my life.” His words were a mumble of sleep, although you didn't believe his promises were any less true because of it.

As the months passed, your belly grew and soon the maids who observed you closely weren’t the only ones to notice the concubine who was carrying the king’s child in her belly. The queen’s threatening glares and followed you it seemed, at every opportunity she had to glimpse your growing waistline.

The king ordered physicians, a whole slew of them checked on you regularly, giving careful instructions about foods and herbs you were forbidden to eat, the kinds of physical activity you were allowed to participate in, and your chambers were moved into a part of the castle that was much closer to the king himself. Whether this was for your benefit or for his, you weren't quite sure.

His visits to your room in the middle of the night, when all others were asleep and the night terrors had kept him awake, told you that perhaps the king’s dependence on you had reached new levels. Sometimes all he wanted was simply for you to stroke his back as he drifted off in your arms, or run your fingertips through his black hair while his breathing evened out. You wondered how he ever slept at all when your room had been so far away from him. You also wondered how you had ever managed to breathe freely when he wasn’t the source of the warmth you held in your arms at night.

It was not a half a year later, during the months when your belly had grown enough to pull you down roughly into your bed, making it hard to do simple things like getting back up without assistance, or putting on your stockings, when you noticed a shift in the dynamic around you. You had new maids who rushed to your side instantly. Fed you warm luxuries and brought you tea around the clock to help with the aches and pains involved with the creation of life. Faces that blurred together and shoved things into your hands, into your mouth, putting garments around you when you were cold and taking them off when you were hot. All the while a presence in the back of the room lingered. Higher level maids who you had seen only lingering around the queen. Were they here for your baby? They scarcely interacted with you directly, yet their presence left you feeling slightly unsettled.

The months blurred together. There was some occurrence outside of the palace that required the king to be gone too often and for weeks at a time. Your room would grow too cold and too dark without him home, and when he would return he was always too stressed and too tired for much of anything besides sleep.

It was during the dark stillness of the night that it happened. The bitter tea you had to plug your nose to drink down at dinner left you feeling nauseated, making your stomach feel too full, too unsteady and the uncomfortable feeling within your chest shifted into a sharp pain that coursed through your belly, making it go hard and rigid as it took your breath straight from within your lungs and flung it across the room along with whatever bit of restraint you had in your mind to keep from screaming out.

The pains would come and your screams would bring in the maids who shoved something into your hands, forcing it down your throat, making you swallow down the bitter taste that would eventually make your mind go fuzzy and the pain would subside some. You’d complained to the maids that brought it with the glances behind them toward the older women in charge who merely clicked their tongues. “It’s good for the baby,” they would say and the bitter tonic was shoved into your hands again. How many days of this must you withstand?

 

But the pain persisted, making you think that perhaps this was the time when this child would finally emerge into the world and quit its assault onto you from the inside.

With the physicians came exams and hushed whispers that never quite reached your ears and you called out for him. For the king, for your love who should be here by now. He had told you, promised you that he would be here, yet your cries were hushed as the pain took over your body and the old women in the back of the room smirked into their sleeves to hide the satisfaction on their faces. That same uneasiness that you felt for weeks lingered, pulsed and grew as it crept up your spine slowly. Your mind dizzied itself, unable to make up from down and you vomited up every bit of the bitter taste you had been fed. Yet it lingered in the back of your throat, deep within your belly, and somewhere in the base of your spine came the kind of pain that ripped and clawed and gnashed hard enough to seize your entire body and shake it like a tiny lamb caught in the jaws of a ferocious lion.

You were done for. You could feel it coming for you and the words that peppered out of the head physician’s lips reached your ears at last.

_ “Too soon.”  _

_ “She won't survive this.” _

_ “I’ve never seen this happen, something is wrong.” _

_ “The king will have our heads.” _

Despite the hushed conversations amongst themselves, no one was telling you anything and the dread was beginning to take over. Your eyes searched. You felt the sweat beading along your skin as the waves took over again and again.

Pain, so much pain. It wasn't supposed to be this way. You had heard plenty of stories of childbirth from the older women in the palace, yet this pain surged up hot deep inside, near the small of your back it radiated and you tried desperately to breathe through it. Through your desperate search for someone who would give you some answers, you searched the faces of your maids, your hands reaching out from the bed you were trapped in for the one closest to you and you found her fingers as you pulled.

“Please, w-where is the king?” You pleaded through gritted teeth and she gasped before she quickly took a step away from you, pulling her hand free from your grasp in an instant. Her eyes avoided yours and when you searched the other faces, the ones who had been the newest arrivals, the ones who had been surrounding you all along this recent week, not a single one of them would look in your eyes.

The panic was growing inside of your chest and you tried to sit up, only to be pushed back down by another maid as the older doctor, the one who seemed to be in charge began barking out questions. Demanding answers while mixing something in a small bowl.

“T-The king...he will come,” you spoke out loud to no one, yet to everyone. Knowing deep inside your heart that he would not stand for this for one second. The old man’s hand rested over your forehead and he leaned down close to your face.

“We have sent word. He is coming as quickly as he can. You must drink this now if we are to save the child. Please, there is no time.”

There was something in his eyes that made you want to believe him. Something deep inside of his face that spoke the truth to you, yet the room had grown strangely quiet as one of the maids at your side began to weep into her hands.

The old man with the believable eyes ordered everyone out of the room and you found yourself sitting up as your muscles cramped and seized around you.

“Something has gone terribly wrong and I am afraid, barring some miracle from the heavens, you will die. The king’s child could die. You must drink this to stop the labor. There is nothing more we can do.”

You could feel a fogginess beginning to take over your mind and as he spoke, an echoing sounded out inside your eardrums, taking every word he said through a hollow tube and you struggled to comprehend what you were being told as every bit of strength left in your body called for him, begged for him, pleaded for him to come to you.

You felt the cold ceramic dish against your mouth and your lips parted as the first bits of a sour liquid hit your tongue. You coughed as your stomach retched and fought against the taste. You felt a wave of nausea hit you and you gagged against the taste that seemed to burn as it went down. The old man cradled your head, shushing over your ears as he tried to get you to swallow.

There was a commotion at the doorway and the rest of the sour liquid sloshed over the side of the bowl when a shouting in the distance broke out.

“Where is she?” The voice was significant and vibrated against your heart with such a force you sat up further, opening your eyes as you sought out his face.

His face would be your cure. His eyes would see through you and pull out every ailment that afflicted you and you would be saved if you could only see his face.

“Your majesty,” the old man stood tall, pivoting his body away from you and blocking your view of the man who pushed through the door. The face you so desperately wanted to see.

“What happened? She was fine when I left…what could have changed so suddenly?” He was shouting, his voice too high pitched. The panic had taken hold inside of his chest and the trembling in his voice ripped at your heart. You felt a surge of pain course through your back, making you cry out.

Through the pain, you could hear the doctor’s words to the king. His reasons, his explanations, his questions as to how things could go so terribly wrong in such a short time. The theories did nothing for you. His suggestions to the king of saving the child through a procedure he knew of flew past your head, taking no foothold in your mind. You were too overcome. The facts of your imminent demise hit you hard and fast like a splash of water in the face and your mind raced as your heart prayed for a swift end. This pain simply could not go on forever, could it?

You felt warm hands reaching for yours, pulling open against your closed fists, emptying the blankets that you held on to so tightly. Instead of the cloth was his touch and when you opened your eyes he was really there.

Worried, distraught, and yet still so unimaginably beautiful, was the face of your love. You felt like you could weep simply from the relief of looking into those eyes. The pain faded and you felt your own lips pull into a smile.

 

“I'm here,” he said close enough for his breath to warm your skin. With him here you could do this. You could do anything with his hands around yours and his eyes blanketing yours with love.

“T-They are saying something is wrong.” He whispered against your face, his voice trembled despite the amazing strength you could read within his words as he kept his voice clear and level and you watched his lips moving as you tried to process the words. Even now as he held your hands, the fog in your mind was spreading, making your eyes want to close and making you want to give in to the darkness you could feel teetering around the edges of your vision.

Your eyes flew open suddenly when a scream echoed out within your room and a young woman was flung through the door, she landed on her knees with a smack against the floor and the king turned to face the man who had pushed her into his view.

“Tell him,” he shouted at the young girl who shrieked and cowered away from the loud scary man. You groaned and turned your head trying to escape the sounds. The unbelievable pain has finally faded some as your limbs felt heavy like downed tree limbs.

“What is the meaning of this?” The king demanded answers and the loud man did something that made the young girl cry out.

“Tell him what you told me.” He said and she was stuttering through some sort of a confession. Something involving moonflowers. Something designed to kill while the king was away. The baby would die after the mother did. On order of the queen.

The kind-eyed old man gasped and the blood left the cheeks of the man you loved as he dropped your hand, his body went stiff and his breathing seemed to have stopped entirely as he stared down at the woman who wept on the floor.

You closed your eyes, suddenly much too tired to keep them open any longer. The darkness around your eyes was so burdensome and you could feel your body being pulled down into the bed. The skin on your face tickled but you didn't care anymore. You were sinking too far down to care.

Something had changed around you and the room had gone quiet. No more weeping in the corner by scared little girls, no more shouting men, no more kind believable eyes or bitter tastes on your tongue that burned when they hit your stomach.

There was one sound though and it bothered your sleep. This sound was desolation. This sound was something that had once been so beautiful but now was forsaken. A waste. The sound was desperate, frantic and it pleaded and prayed. It cried and wept and pulled at you, begged you to open your eyes, begging for you to return, not to leave him and your mind shifted toward the sound.

You squeezed your hand. It took a great deal of effort for those fingers to move, but they did and the weeping sound gasped for breath.

“D-Don’t cry, my love,” you said through ragged thick vocal cords. Your tongue wasn't easy to move anymore. Your love, so filling and all-consuming within your chest, was not so easily declared, but his face was there. “--we will meet again one day.”

And he was so close, you could practically kiss him if only you could move. Why couldn't you just move? The world which you once walked freely through had grown big anchoring roots into the ground; so dark and so heavy.

His lips peppered wet kisses along your hand and his eyes besought yours. The tears on his face dripped down his chin and washed a path down to wet your shirt sleeves.

“Please, don’t go. Please don't leave me,” the pain in his voice felt like too much to bear. But how could you possibly stay when you were so tired. You wanted nothing more than to give in to the darkness that had its claws deep in your spine and enticed you.

The oxygen you pulled into your lungs fought for a path through the brambles and the thorns and you opened your lips to speak again. Something important, something that you had to tell him. Something he must promise you.

“Take our baby -- tell them to save our baby, h-hurry -- promise me.” The words felt like sand on your tongue and he gasped in another breath as more wetness slipped from his eyes down his face. You witnessed the nod of his head. His promise to you was made. He would keep the promise and your child stood a chance.

The room’s lights were fading now. The darkness surrounded his eyes completely and you blinked once..twice...the third time you lost the strength to open them again and you pulled in more air. It barely made a dent, but it was enough.

“Kiss me before I go,” you managed, and you felt the warmth of soft lips, a stark contrast to you own tepid and dry lips, and you drifted further into the darkness as you were swallowed up by it completely.

 

 

_ 23 August 1457 _


	3. ACT III

**_ACT III_ **

****

_ 23 August 2017 _

 

The rumors were flying at work. The office buzzed with them as the worried men and women hunched closely together at their desks, whispering about the state of the company...or more so, the current state of the acting CEO of the company and how the recent upheaval might affect their jobs. You were a temp, so the threat of impending unemployment was more of a steady countdown with an end date, rather than the swift and surprising chop of the guillotine. Your contract would be up in six months, so while you secretly hoped the supervisors who fed you busy work would see the enormous potential in you and someday make you a permanent employee, you weren't exactly holding your breath for it to happen. This was a big company with an enormous workforce and one somewhat competent temp amongst the dozens of other contract workers scattered throughout the building didn't exactly stand out.

“I hear his wife is leaving him.” Jangmi from accounting’s thoroughly scandalized voice broke through the steady din of your floor.

“I heard that the reason he has been gone so much is that he checked himself into a mental hospital.” Alba, the woman who sat directly behind you peeked her head over the partition to share the rumors she heard. “He’s suffering from delusions and has been spending thousands of dollars on private detectives.”

“No no, the real reason he was gone was that he’s a model and was doing a photo shoot in Bali, and he was so handsome in all of the pictures that the director begged him to stay on as a permanent fashion model but he declined.” Jangmi countered and you sighed into your computer screen as quietly as you could, not wanting to let on that you were eavesdropping on their conversation and found their gossip just bothersome enough to distract you from sorting your morning emails.

Your inbox was mostly full of memos from the subject of their discussion. The acting CEO of XiuUnlimited, Director Kim Minseok, who it seemed, had spent the last 12 hours filling the inboxes of his subordinates with reminders on policies that, given the numerous times you had read through these policy reminder emails over and over again, not a single person in this building was likely to forget any time soon.

“Is he really that handsome?” Alba dropped her voice some as if the rumors of his good looks were supposedly a secret. Hell, even you had heard the tales of his good looks.

_ Reminder to all staff: The microwaves in the break rooms are to be wiped down with the antibacterial cleaning wipes provided free of charge by the company. Wipe what sticks, don't get sick! _

Jangmi shrugged into her morning latte, “I've never seen him. Lana from my department saw him once and she went on for days about how handsome he is.”

_ Reminder to all staff: Used paper towels in the bathrooms belong in the trash can, not on the floor. Excess mess leads to excess stress! _

You scrolled through to the bottom of each email, searching for the delete icon at the bottom of the page. It was quite easy to see that the man had some issues if he spent his entire evening thinking of lame rhymes to use to micromanage his employees instead of figuring out how to fix the problems he had in his relationship with his wife.

“I heard,” Alba dropped her voice even further this time and your ears caught the sudden change as you tried not to make it obvious that you tilted your head ever so slightly to catch what she was about to drop. “That when the divorce is final, the temps are getting --” you heard the clicking sound she made with her tongue and you turned to see her making an ax motion across her neck.

This one sent your heart racing just a touch faster and you quickly turned away to look at your computer screen when she looked back at you, not wanting her to know you had heard what she said, although you knew, you just knew it had to be baseless. There was no way your contract would be terminated early just because of a little turmoil in a marriage up at the top.

The man couldn't be that insensitive to his employees, could he? There had to be a hundred temps in this place. Surely the company couldn't survive losing such a huge amount of support staff suddenly and not suffer at least their bottom line, right? It just didn't make sense.

Your mind flashed back to when you were hired and the sickening false smile of the woman who sat behind the large mahogany desk as you were shuffled through. It was the only time you had been upstairs and it felt more like a parade of products on a conveyer belt as she chose the ones that caught her eye. You knew she was important by the way she looked down her nose at you, and when you learned later that she was the wife of the CEO you couldn’t find yourself to be the least bit surprised.

“It was an arranged marriage, wasn't it? Rich people really are strange sometimes. What did they think would happen if they marry without even knowing the person.” Jangmi rattled on over your busy mind as you briefly daydreamed about just what it would be like to be thrust into a life like that. Married to a stranger simply because your parents had struck some sort of fortuitous business deal. A life of excess and privilege but with none of the freedom to do what you wanted with it all.

_ Reminder to all staff: Driving faster than 10MPH in the parking garage leaves unsightly black marks on the floor. Drive slow so it won't show! _

You supposed a life like that would make anyone a little bit crazy.

Your day was suspiciously quiet. You’d caught up with every deadline you had received from the week prior and found yourself searching for menial tasks to fill your day. Yet when you asked your supervisor for some new material to work on she shrugged and passed you a stack of papers that needed copying, or short lists of documents for data entry. Tasks that were easily completed in less than one hour and required almost no brainpower to do.

You tried not to be paranoid.

You tried not to let the rumors from this morning get to you, yet as you completed yet another stack of mindless copies, you couldn't help but notice how the other employees, the ones who weren't temps seemed genuinely swamped with work. Things that would last them weeks, while you were handed the short term tasks that had no strings attached. Nothing that would hold you to it, or keep you busy for long enough to be considered a valued asset to the company.

It was within the last ten minutes of the day, when you were sorting through your paperclips, choosing the bent ones to throw into the trash can between your legs (Reminder to all staff: Discard broken or warped paper clips, as they can damage reports and require documents to be reprinted. Untidy supplies are not okay guys!) when you heard a loud gasp from across the office. Followed shortly by the sound of someone cursing at mid volume from a desk behind you. You looked up in alarm at the sudden ruckus that seemed to be breaking out inside the building and when you turned behind you, Alba sat facing you and Jangmi stood with her head over the partition watching, with their mouths open and wide eyes.

It only took a moment for your eyes to zero in on her open computer screen, on the latest email from CEO Kim Minseok, that was opened there for you to see.

_ Attention all staff, Effective immediately all Temporary Workers will no longer be employees of XiuUnlimited. Contracts that have not yet expired will be terminated and former employees will receive severance pay in their accounts within 3-5 business days. Please remember to take all of your personal belongings with you when you leave. A security officer will escort you out of the building. Things left behind, are no longer mine! _

You stared at the email on your screen in disbelief. Well, mild disbelief that was turning into something else. Something like anger that something like this could really be happening to you. Somewhere in the office, a woman was crying and you scrolled down to the bottom of the email and hit delete, watching the animation on your screen as it flew away and vanished for the last time.

There was something dehumanizing about being singled out, watched, and escorted out of the building by a man wearing a uniform that only had a plastic badge and a flashlight. He stood a few feet behind you as you gathered the last bit of Polaroid pictures you had on the corkboard behind your cubicle and tossed them into the paper box Alba had handed you from below her desk.

“We’re really sorry,” Jangmi said softly at your back. “Yeah, sorry,” Alba chimed in agreement and you forced a tense smile that only lasted for a few seconds before you just couldn't do it anymore.

You had just lost your job for seemingly no reason at all and they would just have to forgive you if couldn't fake being nice.

You had to turn in your ID badge on the sidewalk outside of the building. The one that worked the lock on front door and officially named you as an adult employee who received a paycheck and medical benefits in exchange for you spending 8 hours a day sitting behind a desk doing any and every task they presented you to the best of your ability. And for what? So you could be fired because some rich kid threw a tantrum and didn’t like the wife his parents bought for him?

You wanted to scream. You wanted to cry.

You wanted a drink.

That was something you could probably manage, despite the nagging voice in the back of your mind telling you that an unemployed person should not be wasting money at a bar when she would certainly have to eat again sometime soon.

Your mood moved your feet and you found your eyes searching the signs around you for something that would wet your throat and numb your mind for a few hours while you wallowed in a little good old-fashioned self-pity.

Perhaps on any other day, you would have avoided the somewhat shady looking alleyway lined with smelly dumpsters and probably a whole assortment of vermin, but today you merely wandered. You found yourself pleasantly surprised to find yourself walking upon what looked to be a hole in the wall bar with a sign above the door that simply read “The Commander.”

The name brought a warmth to your chest and you found yourself smiling for the first time today when you tried the door and found it open. Inside was peaceful, with smooth contemporary music filtering through overhead speakers and a warm decor that smelled clean and inviting.

A bell rang above the door when it closed and a man in a dress shirt, vest and bow tie looked up from his spot at the bar. The glass he was drying shined in the lights overhead and he nodded his head in your direction with a friendly smile.

“Anywhere you like, miss,” the bartender said with a slight accent and you looked around at the empty place. You really could sit anywhere you liked. As you rounded the corner you were surprised to see one other patron sitting on the far end of the bar, not visible from where you entered but you definitely weren't alone with your very own bartender on the day you were fired.

The man at the bar didn't look up when you entered, nor did he move at all it seemed, as he hunched over himself with his head angled down and his eyes closed. A drink sat in front of him, mostly gone, a small sliver of brown liquid, probably whiskey from the bottle you could see still left on the bar counter close to him and after a long moment in which you were nearly positive that he was sleeping, the man inhaled a gasping breath and reached for the glass, downed the rest of his drink quickly and tapped on the counter twice as soon as the glass was set down.

The bartender took slow strides toward the man, grabbed the glass and set it into the sink. In seconds a fresh glass with at least two fingers of whiskey sat in front of the man who was simply too enchanting to ignore at this point.

You chose your seat, a booth near the other end of the bar where you could watch him with plenty of cover should your spying be discovered.

This was just the kind of distraction you needed and when the bartender left his post to walk up to your table and retrieve your order, you hoped and prayed that the man at the bar would not notice, not follow the bartender, and not find you watching his every move this way.

The man didn't move and you had your drink and your distraction still very much intact.

After what felt like much too long for a person to be sitting with his eyes closed at a bar, although who were you to judge what a person should be allowed to do alone at a bar, the man lifted his head, pulled a brown envelope out of a briefcase that rested against his leg and set it down carefully onto the bar in front of him.

His head was lifted now, his eyes were open and focused on the envelope in front of him and you felt a jarring surge of something hit you as you watched him.

He was handsome, this you could tell instantly, but there was something more than just handsome happening on his face. His profile was sharp, his hair was dark and his skin light enough to create a positively luxurious contrast that sent a warmth spreading through your chest as you looked at him.

The longer you looked at him, the more at ease you felt with the voyeur inside of you, although that might just be the second dirty martini in your belly, and you found yourself craning your neck to see more clearly just what he was doing with that mysterious brown envelope in front of him.

After another long moment, he flipped the parcel over, spun his fine fingertips around, gripping a string that held the flap closed, and opened it. Inside was a stack of papers that you were much too far away to read and you frowned at the idea that you couldn't sit next to him while he did this.

He lifted a hand to his chest and inhaled a deep breath before angling his head in your direction as he opened his coat and fished through for something and you caught a glimpse of his whole face.

You gasped out loud, and quickly covered your mouth with your hand to hide it while you prayed that he didn't hear.

Gorgeous. Radiating with beauty really, but more than that something about his face felt downright familiar.

Was he a celebrity? Was he someone you had seen before, maybe on television, or maybe a musician? Had you listened to his songs in your headphones as you fell asleep at night?

The sensation was stronger than anything you'd ever felt in your whole life and you searched your recent memory for an image of someone with a face that would floor you this easily. You swore your mind was playing tricks on you when the images of his shirtless muscular torso floated through your head. And how in the world could you be able to imagine what that face might look like pulled into a crooked smile as he lovingly stroked your face? As if someone like him would ever look at you that way. You found no reasons for the images despite how thoroughly you searched your memory.

You came up empty.

You didn't have a name to this face, you definitely didn't have a voice or direct interaction to him and you shook your head in confusion as you watched him take a deep breath, turn to the back of the document with a pen in his hand and sign with a flourish and two dots.

The force of those two dots seemed strong enough to poke two holes in the paper and the pen thudded on the counter as he tossed the pen down in a huff, stuffed the stack of documents back inside the envelope and returned the whole mess to the crisp clean briefcase by his feet.

He then grabbed the drink and downed it in a single go, coughing and sputtering (adorably) as it went down too hard. Why did he have to be so enticing? He wiped hastily at his lips with the back of his hand and pulled off a ring from his finger, holding it a good six inches from the countertop for ten seconds before opening his hand and letting the ring fall.

It fell with a clatter that rang out over the sound of the music and your mind showed you the image of the ring falling to the floor and rolling under a bed. These drinks were pretty strong. You liked this place. You liked that bartender's heavy hand and you really liked the name of this bar.

And to say you liked the handsome man sitting at the bar was an understatement. You were enchanted by him. Enthralled and enraptured and bewitched by his every movement as he stood up from the seat and turned swiftly away from you. His steps weren't as steady as the bartender who walked in the opposite direction as him and reached for the wad of cash he had left on the counter as he left and your mind scrambled and screamed very suddenly at you.

He was leaving. Was he leaving? Just like that? Why was he leaving when you had only just found him?

But you didn't want him to leave. You jumped to your feet, wide-eyed and probably drunk and caught the sight of his crisp clean briefcase still leaning beside the barstool and your mind whirled in a panic.

In his drunken confusion, he had left this important attaché behind and you had to, HAD to return it to him.

You had to witness his eyes on yours just once and that sweet crooked smile that showed an adorable amount of gums and he had to look into your face and say your name as you held on too tightly to the case and didn't want to let go. Oh how affected you would surely be. You craved everything about his face.

These drinks must really be strong. Yet, strangely the room wasn't spinning and you easily grasped the case in your hands without much trouble at all. But the strange feeling in your chest with the thought of seeing him again was overpowering you.

You bypassed the forgotten wedding ring on the bar. Even the bartender didn't touch it when he grabbed the cash and he knowingly watched as you picked up the case and followed the same path he had taken when he left with determination written all over your body.

Maybe he remained just outside, searching his pockets for his phone so he could call a driver or his mom to let her know that he had just seen the love of his life and she stole his briefcase.

The street just outside was dark now, and a light drizzle fell along the pavement as you peered through the opened door for any signs of him.

You knew the size of him, the shape of him, the look of his black hair as it fell just along his temples and the way he ticked his fingertips along his sharp cheekbones as he contemplated life.

Never in your life had you been this observant, but your memory was flooded with him now. You must have picked up quite a bit about his body language while you watched him having his drink and having his divorce party for one.

“Am I imagining things or did you just steal my briefcase?”

A voice, no, his voice, you were certain, reverberated against your eardrums and sent a jolt of something strange through your chest and you slowly turned around to face the man who stood in the dimly lit hallway at the entrance to this bar.

Once he spoke, you realized what must have happened. He had gone to the bathroom which must be just around the corner past the exit and you, being the rash, anxious, quick to act, slow to think, especially when drinking, you, that you are, had made a mistake.

You closed your eyes, inhaled a deep breath to settle the strange storm that was brewing inside of your chest, and opened your eyes to look at him head on, and mere feet away from you.

You turned to look into his face, with an apology and an excuse ready to fire off on the tip of your tongue.

You turned to look into his face, ready to speak. Ready to act. Ready to be normal and do the right thing.

Only that isn't what happened, because you turned to look into his face and the logical thinking part of your brain ceased to function in the way you had become accustomed to in all of your years of living on this earth.

His face.

His eyes.

His face, and his lips... and there was a strange stillness that washed over you where you stood in the entryway of that bar. It was an all-consuming stillness that seized your heart inside of your chest and made it difficult to breathe.

You felt frozen in your tracks because there was something strange happening inside of your fuzzy mind when you looked at his face.

“I’m sorry, I--” your own words were forcefully pulled from your lips as the logical part of your brain screamed at you to speak, to come up with an excuse for this situation but the pulsing inside of your chest burned when you breathed in and he was…

He was frozen. His lips were parted, hung open as if he had been poised to speak and interrupted by something that was profound enough to stop him in his tracks. To interrupt him so completely that he didn't even bother to snap his jaw back shut, but instead stood there, mouth gaping and eyes wide on your face as if some wizard had cast a spell on him and frozen him mid-thought.

“I’m sorry,”  _ My Lord _ , you tried again but your own intrusive thoughts seemed to be pressing hard against you, nagging at you, trying to coax something from deep within your soul now and you shook your head at the absurdity of this feeling.

“I drank too much.” You finally heard him speak. It came out as the softest whisper, designed only for his own ears, “I must have drunk too much this time. This is impossible.”

“I’m sorry?” You asked softly as your fingers wrapped tighter around the handle of his fancy briefcase. It felt like a lifeline, a small token from this world that served to keep you grounded and remind you of where you were and who you were. Keeping you from falling too deeply into those eyes that felt so tempting and easy to become lost in.

_ My Lord. _  There was a wetness in his eyes as he stared at your face, positively transfixed, his pretty eyes held onto yours with a desperation that you couldn't quite place. Yet the longer you looked at him the stronger the pulsing inside of your own chest grew. It burned like indigestion now and you rubbed a hand lightly over your breastplate, willing it to subside and give you some peace.

“Or I’ve finally lost my mind for real,” he added and he lifted a trembling hand to rub roughly over his face once, before slipping his fingers through his black hair, combing it back in a single pass, it bounced effortlessly back into place and your fingers itched to feel the strands rushing through your own hands again.

_ Again. _

It was too strong. You had to close your eyes and so you did, for just a moment you had to look away from his face that was watching you with those wide pleading eyes. You sighed into the darkness your eyelids provided and leaned against the doorframe for support.

_ My Love _

It was his face again, only this time the words coming from his mouth sounded ancient. The love though, it was timeless. It was the same love you’d shown again and again through your words, your touches and your actions. It was the love for the commander. The brave soldier who led his men into battle time and time again, returning with scars and traumas that would keep him up at night.

It was the softness of his lips against yours, and the warmth of fingertips sliding along your skin. Unlike the fantastical shifting sands of a dreamland, this felt solid enough to build a foundation on. This felt like a memory woven so deeply into your soul the mere glimpse of his face created a bond tight enough to hold ten thousand tons.

If a glimpse of his face had this strong of an effect what would a touch do?

Your eyes must have only been closed for a second. A fool could see that you could not keep from looking at his face for very long, not when he was there right in front of you, still frozen in place under some spell.

Your chest felt too heavy, the breaths you took in and out took more effort than you could comprehend, but the pulsing inside of your chest was engulfing you now. How long until you were swallowed up entirely?

You knew him.

You knew him. You knew this man who stood in front of you and you felt like you might possibly suffocate inside this doorway with two dirty martinis in your belly, a stolen briefcase in your hands and a tear running down your cheek.

You heard a soft exhale of breath from him, and he swayed on his feet as his eyes blinked quickly. Whatever conclusions he had been working out inside his mind seemed to have been reached and you could feel something changing in the way he was looking at you.

He let out a shuddering sigh before he crumbled, covering his open mouth with an open palm, he sagged against the wall of the hallway, opposite your doorway and he closed his eyes.

You took a step forward and the briefcase thudded to the floor at your feet, forgotten and unnecessary. The confusion and distress on his face called to you and your feet moved on their own.

His breathing was labored, his hand moved from his face to his chest where he rubbed roughly, gasping in and out for breath you could see the wetness spill over his lashes and fall onto his cheeks. His eyes were frantic, searching for meaning in this, searching for something that made some fucking sense, yet the pull to him was strong and undeniable. You moved closer, with hands outstretched, you had to touch him.

His face was real, he was real, he was really here, leaning against the wall in this bar being consumed by something you couldn't comprehend and you had to help him.

The first contact of your fingertips along his cheek sent an electric buzz through your body and you pushed through it, moving in closer, you cupped his cheek with one hand, joining with your other on the other side and he swayed within your touch, eyes focusing again on you with furrowed brows, he breathed heavily through his parted lips.

The wetness you felt along his face was warm.

Sticky and warm, different from tears and when you pulled a hand away you saw red. So much red, coating your hand blood red and raw. You gasped into it, closing your eyes you shook your head to rid yourself of it, but it returned again and again, stronger and more painful. The pain wanted to destroy. It wanted to rob your love and your laughter and your hope. The pain was as powerful as a tsunami yet moved through your body like an unstoppable shadow spread slowly over the forest floor.

His eyes were held in yours, and you watched as their light faded. Your own tears clouded your vision and you blinked faster, trying to focus on his face, on his lips that spoke to you as the pain of losing this man you loved so completely surged through your chest and broke your heart into two jagged pieces that would never fit together the same again. No matter how many times you tried to mend it, no matter how many experts you saw, no matter how many therapies you attended, the shattered pieces of your heart sat crooked, cracked, and surely would leak with every meager pump of blood through your veins the organ tried to make.

The soldier was motionless. The light in his eyes had faded and he was taken from you and you sobbed and you begged and you pleaded as you cradled his face in your arms, but no one would listen. No one would bring him back to you. The medic never came and the strongest and bravest man you knew was gone from your life forever.

“Shhh...don’t cry, my love,” he said. The man in front of you, in this bar, spoke softly with his eyes closed and you felt the warmth from his face through the palms of your hands.

He was here. It was him. It was the commander, and he was here.

He was real and he was here and whatever twists of fate that happened to lead you into this bar on this day had found it in its cards to return him to you. You had your commander back. You had your king. And he was here.

“I told you we would meet again one day,” you said and when you opened your eyes again the blood was gone. Replaced by his face, cleaned with the tears on his skin and his ears caught your words and his heavy eyelids shoved open.

He watched you for a moment before he shifted, straightening his posture, he stood stronger onto his own two legs again, using the strength in his body and perhaps borrowing a little from your words.

“Do you remember me?” The question was more hopeful than any you had ever heard before and you wanted to laugh. You wanted to shout and dance and scream your response because yes. Yes! Yes of course you did! The heavens had given him back to you, the least you could do was remember the greatest love your soul had ever known.

“Yes,” You said. The exhale of relief from his chest pulled at eyelids down and pulled the corners of his lips up.

“It’s been a long time,” He said, his eyes full of wonder with each look, yet thick with the emotion he was now trying to reign in.

A long time indeed. His words felt like gospel yet completely absurd at the same time. This man was a stranger to you mere moments ago, yet your heart had given you lifetimes of him and all you had to do was listen and believe it.

The longer you looked at his face, the stronger the memories became. The more the memories began to overwhelm you all over again you watched him pull his bottom lip in between his teeth and bite down lightly as he rocked on his heels, his focus never once leaving your face for a second as the two of you seemed to settle into a strange silence where you just watched each other.

“Were you going to go back in?” It wasn't that the silence was uncomfortable, or even standing in this hallway watching ghosts fly through your mind as you stared across small space of the hallway in awe, but there was only so much time you two could spend here before the place closed for the night.

Your question broke him out of his quiet reverie and his eyes widened and focused again. The small smile on his lips persisted.

“I don't know,” he said through that crooked grin and there was something juvenile about the way he lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. “I wasn’t done looking at you yet.”

The quiet way he spoke felt like the warmth and comfort of coming home and you felt that warmth spread through your chest with each breath you took. Your heart thumped, strong and steady and each beat seemed to grow stronger, making your mood feel nearly manic with how well it worked. The cracks and missing pieces that had once weighed you down so seemed to be fitting into place better.

“Do you think, I could hug you?” Your own voice surprised you. How easily the words flew from your lips. How natural it felt to ask him such a question and how satisfying the look of surprise on his face was to hear it.

His dark eyebrows danced a quick two-step, and he nodded his head. You leaped into him before he could change his mind. Before you had a chance to listen to the voice in your head that confirmed that you had lost whatever bit of sanity you had left in you.

Your arms flew around his waist. His arms wrapped tightly around your shoulders and he was warm and he was real.

The heat from his body surrounded you. The crisp clean smell that reached your nostrils filled you up to capacity and sent your brain into a tizzy. And when he squeezed down tighter and ducked his head down to rest his chin over your shoulder, you let your eyes drift closed.

“My name is Minseok, by the way. Kim Minseok.” He spoke softly beside your ear and his arms squeezed so tightly you wondered how you had an inch of space to breath in. You didn't care. He held onto you with a kind of soul-altering desperation that mirrored the inflexible way you adhered to him. You smiled into the warmth of his chest and said your own name softly enough for the words to tickle against his neck.

He shifted his face suddenly and you could feel the warmth of his cheek as it brushed against your face. Your breath fueled entirely by the smell of him, caught in your throat when you felt his lips against your earlobe. The warmth in your chest was changing, into a tickling hot heat that trailed its sinews down the back of your neck, between your shoulder blades and took a path along your spine. Positively affecting every inch of your skin and bringing a different kind of need along with it.

He said your name, ghosting its syllables within a low breath against your ear. It was unfair how glorious your name sounded on his lips and you were suddenly eternally grateful for the steadfast embrace that held you up.

He moved again, pulling up against the small of your back, his arms felt strong enough to lift you easily off your feet and the action made your grip around his shoulders tighten.

This was not a hug. This was a desperate embrace. You clung to him just as tightly as he did to you, suddenly physically unable to separate from this man whom you had already been away from for so many lifetimes.

“It's so nice to meet you,” he said against your ear and you felt the tip of his nose as he nuzzled against your neck, tickling your face with his clean black hair and making it damn near impossible to stop the small sound that escaped from the back of your throat as everything about him overwhelmed you.

Everything except for the nagging in the back of your mind...something downright humorous jumped out at you and a giggle rose up inside your chest that made him stiffen and pull his face away from your neck with curious eyes.

“Kim Minseok?” You said through your smiling lips and his lips pulled into a tiny pout as he nodded his head.

“Hmm?” Obviously, he wouldn't find the humor, he didn't know a single thing about your life.

“My boss has the same name as you,” you said and you tried to ignore the way his hands around your waist relaxed some and trailed lightly over your back as he loosened his hold around you. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open in surprise at the coincidence.

“Or, I should say ‘my ex-boss’ I suppose. I was fired today.”

You felt the cool air at your back as his hands fell and his shoulders pulled back straighter. His eyes were on still yours, only the smile was shrinking as he blinked slowly with your news.

A small pout eventually grew on his lips and you watched his face transform for a moment before you shook your head, ridding yourself of the dark cloud you had called back over your head.

“It’s okay, I was only a temp. I was going to be let go in six months anyway. I got a pretty sweet severance.”

You still stood against his body, and you definitely felt a stiffening in his muscles when you spoke.

He had always had an expressive face. You remember from the nights spent in the king's bed as he complained about the stress in his life, opening up honestly to you in ways that he wasn't able to with anyone else. You were still in tune with his moods, even centuries and lifetimes later.

It started with a tiny step back and a hand ran swiftly through his straight hair. He cleared his throat softly and his eyes were blinking too quickly.

“T-Temp?” His lips hung open when he said the word and you watched as his lips pulled wide into a grimace that showed his white teeth. He inhaled sharply through those teeth before he spoke again.

But it had already been set into motion. The wheels turned frantically in your head as you put together the clues you had witnessed, along with the rumors that had followed your boss around. The good looks, which, experiencing this man’s face up close, you could not deny that Minseok had one of, if not the most handsome face you had ever had the privilege of seeing up close and in person.

The wealth, which as you looked at the brand name clothing he wore, much more than something you could even buy off the rack at a high-end department store, these were the kinds of clothes that were fitted and custom made. The watch itself must be close to $15k itself, not to mention the well-manicured eyebrows that sat handsomely on his forehead just below the expert haircut that probably cost half of your monthly rent.

The rumors of trouble with his wife? What kind of husband sat alone at a bar doing things like drinking himself silly and dramatically pulling off his wedding ring, long after he should be home having dinner with his family?

“Please tell me it wasn't a mass termination of all temporary workers.” He softly begged and you felt a slight tugging against the hem of your shirt where his fingers played with the fabric there. The sheepish look in his eyes caught yours just once before he looked back down at his hand pulling at a lose thread.

Your eyes narrowed on him while the grimace on his face changed into another pout. Deeper and intentional this time he zipped his lips shut, puffed his cheeks with air and pushed his bottom lip way out, creating an expression so irresistibly adorable, and in a single play, that you scoffed right out loud, rolling your eyes so far into your head you felt the eye strain. How could his face hold so much power over you?

“Are you kidding me right now?”

“If I had known it was you--”

“You’re  _ that Kim Minseok _ ?” The pout had served to calm the incredulity in your voice some. He looked back at you, biting down on his lip as he watched you process the information you had just received.

“My boss?” You asked.

“Ex-boss,” he answered.

“You have a wife.” This didn't quite come out as a question because everything you know about Director Kim Minseok, Acting CEO of XiuUnlimited was flooding through your mind now.

“Ex-wife,” he supplied with a glance down at his unadorned left hand.

“You… went missing last year and lost your mind and checked into a mental hospital and hired private investigators … all to try and find--”

“I found her,” he interrupted where you were going with the rumors you had heard about him. Rumors that you thought were just the ramblings of people who had too much time on their hands and had seen way too many dramas.

“I found her, she showed up right in front of me. She tried to steal my briefcase.” You wanted to correct him, but he was talking now and something about the fiery look in his eyes stopped you.

“I found you. And I didn't lose my mind after all. I only thought I had. But I found you or you found me or maybe we were always meant to find each other, I don't know. But right now I'm looking into the eyes of the human being that I know better than the stranger that I had called my wife for three years, and I finally feel like I can breathe again.”

“And you are real.” A thickness was building in his voice as he spoke. “And that love was real. I wasn't crazy, or imagining it, or --” he swallowed hard as he blinked his eyes faster and the distance between you seemed too great.

He must have felt the same because he took a step closer to you, his hands reached forward, fingertips light along your cheek until you felt the warmth of his palms on your face.

The year might have changed outside. The countries, the settings, even the small details about your life. But as you looked into his eyes in this dark hallway of an empty bar, you knew, with absolution that the man who stood in front of you was the same man who your heart had loved.

He had stopped speaking, with his thumbs rubbing delicate circles along your jawline and his eyes half closing as his eyelids trembled. Emotion or maybe the sheer gravity of your history together pulling at them and he fought through to get a glimpse of you. Your own focus had drifted from his striking eyes, down his straight nose, to the curve of his upper lip that sat plump, pink, perfectly moisturized despite the desperate way he breathed through his parted lips and the light touches the tip of his tongue made against the flesh.

“Will you come with me?” He whispered against your skin now. The gravity between your hearts was too strong and had unknowingly pulled you closer to him. You only noticed the change when the warmth of his chest against yours made you want to wrap your arms around him again.

“Well, we can't stay here,” you agreed with a shrug because you’d be damned if you were going to let him walk out that door without you by his side. Not after it took so long for you to finally find him again.

“I don't just mean right now,” he said, “I mean, tonight, tomorrow, next month and next year, and forever.”

“I wouldn't dream of leaving you ever again, Kim Minseok.” The sight of his lips, close up and moving closer to you blurred as your eyes lost sight of them and gave up the view as you closed your eyes and felt the first softness of his kiss. A kiss that brought with it a flood of muscle memory, desire, and need. A kiss that brought with it years of love and longing. A kiss that soothed every ache you had inside of your chest where the wounded and scarred heart muscle struggled to heal from the wounds of the past.

The relief was instantaneous and complete.

When you finally left that bar, it was hand in hand with the man your soul had been destined to love forever.

And it was with a promise to do just that for the rest of time.

 

 

**THE END.**


End file.
